SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS 



AND OTHER MISCELLANIES 



&o\Mtb from t\z f xxhXx%\tts Wxxtxnp at 
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. 




STRAHAN AND CO. PUBLISHERS 
56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 



• Ins 



It. Clay, Son, and Taylor, I'rtnt ) 
Bread Street Mill, London. 



PREFACE. 



In giving this volume to the public, it is necessary to 
say, that Dean Stanley, though approving of its pub- 
lication, has taken no active part in making the 
selection. It is possible that students of his works 
may miss some of their favourite passages; but it 
was the compiler's aim to bring the Dean's writings 
within the reach of many who could not be expected 
to read the larger volumes, and in this fact is to be 
found the explanation of the prevailing character of the 
passages selected. 



October 1st, 1867. 



HI 



CONTENTS. 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 

JACOB 

DEBORAH... 
BALAAM ... 

JEPHTHAH 

SAMSON ... 

SAMUEL ... 

SAUL 

JONATHAN ... 

JOAB ... 

SOLOMON ... 

ELIJAH - 

JONAH 

ISAIAH 

ST. PETER 
. ST. PAUL ... 

- ST. JOHN 

MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 

THE PASSOVER 

THE BATTLE OF JEZREEL 

PLAGUES OF UZZIAH'S REIGN 

INVASION OF SENNACHERIB 



viii 



CONTENTS. 



SACRED SCENES. 

PAGE 

APPROACH TO PALESTINE 2 39 

JERUSALEM AND ITS ENVIRONS , 2 45 

THE MOUNT OF OLIVET AND ITS MEMORIES 250 

NATURAL MEMORIALS 2 55 

DESCRIPTIVE. 

VARIED CHARACTER OF THE SCENERY OF PALESTINE ... 267 

LEBANON AND ITS CEDARS 2 7 2 

THEBES AND ITS COLOSSAL STATUES 2 §4 

THE GREEK EASTER - ■ 2 95 

HISTORICAL. 

THE RELATIONS OF CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 307 

AIDS TO STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 314 

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BLACK PRINCE 32 1 

THE TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE ... ... 332 

DEDICATION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY 342 

THE MURDER OF BECKET 347 

BIOGRAPHICAL. 

THE DEATH OF DR. ARNOLD 377 

CONSTANTINE 39° 

IVAN THE TERRIBLE 404 

EXPOSITORY. 

DAVID AND HIS PSALTER 417 

THE CORINTHIANS 426 

PRACTICAL 

HEAVEN 

THE CONFLICT OF THE SOUL .. 
THE BEAST IN MAN 



44I 

445 

A.Z2 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS 



B 



JACOB. 



" A BRAHAM was a hero, Jacob was 'a plain man, 
dwelling in tents.' Abraham we feel to be above 
ourselves, Jacob to be like ourselves." So the distinction 
between the two great patriarchs has been drawn out by 
a celebrated theologian.* " Few and evil have the days of 
the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the 
days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their 
pilgrimaged So the experience of Israel himself is 
summed up in the close of his life. Human cares, 
jealousies, sorrows, cast their shade over the scene,— the 
golden dawn of the Patriarchal age is overcast ; there is 
no longer the same unwavering faith ; we are no longer in 
communnion with the " High Father," the " Friend of 



* Newman's Sermons. 



4 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



God;" we at times almost doubt whether we are not 
with His enemy. But for this very reason the interest 
attaching to Jacob, though of a less lofty and universal 
kind, is more touching, more penetrating, more attractive. 
Nothing but the perverse attempt to demand perfection of 
what is held before .us as imperfect could blind us to the 
exquisite truthfulness which marks the delineation of the 
Patriarch's character. 

Look at him, as his course is unrolled through the long 
vicissitudes which make his life a faithful mirror of human 
existence in its many aspects. Look at him, as compared 
with his brother Esau. Unlike the sharp contrast of the 
earlier pairs of Sacred history, in these two the good and 
evil are so mingled, that at first we might be at a loss 
which to follow, which to condemn. The distinctness 
with which they seem to stand and move before us against 
the clear distance, is a new phase in the history. Esau, 
the shaggy, red-haired huntsman, the man of the field, 
with his arrows, his quiver, and his bow, coming in weary 
from the chase, caught as with the levity and eagerness of 
a child, by the sight of the lentile soup — " Feed me, I pray 
thee, with the red, red pottage," — yet so full of generous 
impulse, so affectionate towards his aged father, so forgiv- 
ing towards his brother, so open-hearted, so chivalrous 
who has not at times felt his heart warm toward the poor 
rejected Esau; and been tempted to join with him as he 



JACOB. 



5 



cries with "a great and exceeding bitter cry," "Hast thou 
but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O 
my father!" And who does not in like manner feel at 
times his indignation swell against the younger brother ? 
" Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he hath supplanted 
me these two times ? " He entraps his brother, he deceives 
his father, he makes a bargain even in his prayer; in his 
dealings with Laban, in his meeting with Esau, he still 
calculates and contrives ; he distrusts his neighbours, he 
regards with prudential indifference the insult to his 
daughter, and the cruelty of his sons ; he hesitates to 
receive the assurance of Joseph's good will; he repels, 
even in his lesser traits, the free confidence that we 
cannot withhold from the Patriarchs of the elder 
generation. 

But yet, taking the two from first to last, how entirely 
is the judgment of Scripture and the judgment of posterity 
confirmed by the result of the whole ! The mere impulsive 
hunter vanishes away, light as air : " he did eat and drink, 
and rose up, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his 
birthright." The substance, the strength of the Chosen 
family, the true inheritance of the promise of Abraham, 
was interwoven with the very essence of the character of 
the "plain man dwelling in tents," steady, persevering, 
moving onward with deliberate settled purpose, through 
years of suffering and prosperity, of exile and return, of 



6 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



bereavement and recovery. The birthright is always before 
him. Rachel is won from Laban by hard service, " and 
the seven years seemed unto him but a few days for the 
love he had to her." Isaac, and Rebekah, and Rebekah's 
nurse, are remembered with a faithful, filial remembrance ; 
Joseph and Benjamin are long and passionately loved 
with a more than parental affection — bringing down his 
grey hairs for their sakes "in sorrow to the grave." 
This is no character to be contemned or scoffed at : if it 
was encompassed with much infirmity, yet its very com- 
plexity demands our reverent attention ; in it are bound 
up, as his double name expresses, not one man, but two ; 
by toil and struggle, Jacob, the Supplanter, is gradually 
transformed into Israel, the prince of God ; the harsher 
and baser features are softened and purified away : he 
looks back over his long career with the fulness of experi- 
ence and humility. " I am not worthy of the least of all 
thy mercies and of all the truth which Thou hast shown 
unto Thy servant." Alone of the Patriarchal family, his 
end his recorded as invested with the solemnity of warning 
and of prophetic song. " Gather yourselves together, ye 
sons of Jacob, and hearken unto Israel your father." 
We need not fear to acknowledge that the God of 
Abraham and the God of Isaac was also the God of Jacob. 

Most unworthy indeed should we be of the gift of the 
Sacred narrative, if we failed to appreciate it in this, its 



JACOB. 



7 



full, its many-sided aspect. Even in the course of the 
Jewish history, what a foreshadowing of the future ! We 
may venture to trace in the wayward chieftain of Edom 
the likeness of the fickle uncertain Edomite, now allied, 
now hostile to the seed of promise j the wavering, unstable 
dynasty, which came forth from Idumaea; Herod the 
magnificent and the cruel; Herod Antipas, who "heard 
John gladly" and slew him; Herod Agrippa, "almost a 
Christian "—half Jew and half heathen. " A turbulent and 
unruly race," so Josephus describes the Idumsans of his 
day : "always hovering on the verge of revolution, always 
rejoicing in changes, roused to arms by the slightest motion 
of flattery, rushing to battle as if they were going to a 
feast." But we cannot mistake the type of the Israelites 
in him whom, beyond even Abraham and Isaac, they 
recognised as their father Israel. His doubtful qualities 
exactly recall to us the meanness of character, which, even 
to a proverb, we call in scorn, "Jewish" By his peculiar 
discipline of exile and suffering, a true counterpart is 
produced of the special faults and special gifts, known 
to us chiefly through his persecuted descendants in the 
middle ages. In Jacob we see the same timid, cautious 
watchfulness that we know so well, though under darker 
colours, through our great masters of fiction, in Shylock 
of Venice and Isaac of York. But no less, in the nobler 
side of his career do we trace the germs of the unbroken 



8 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



endurance, the undying resolution, which keeps the 
nation alive still even in its present outcast condition, 
and which was the basis, in its brightest days, of the 
heroic zeal, long-suffering, and hope of Moses, of David, 
of Jeremiah, of the Maccabees, of the twelve Jewish 
Apostles, and the first martyr, Stephen. 

We cannot, however, narrow the lessons of Jacob's 
history, to the limits of the Israelite Church. All eccle- 
siastical history is the gainer by the sight of such a 
character so delineated. It is a character not all black 
nor all white, but chequered with the mixed colours 
which make up so vast a proportion of the double phases 
of the leaders of the Church and the world in every age. 
The neutrality (so to speak) of the Scripture narrative 
may be seen by its contrast with the dark hues in 
which Esau is painted by the Rabbinical authors. He 
is hindered in his chase by Satan ; Hell opens as he goes 
in to his father ; he gives his father dogs' flesh instead of 
venison ; he tries to bite Jacob on his return ; he commits 
five sins in one day. This is the difference between mere 
national animosity and the high impartial judgment of the 
Sacred story, evenly balanced and steadily held, yet not 
regardless of the complicated and necessary variations of 
human thought and action. For students of theology, 
for future pastors, for young men in the opening of life, 
what a series of lessons is opened in the history of these 



JACOB. 



9 



two youths, issuing from their father's tent in Beersheba ! 
The free, easy, frank good nature of the profane Esau 
is not overlooked; the craft, duplicity, timidity of 
the religious Jacob is duly recorded. Yet, on the one 
hand, fickleness, unsteadiness, weakness, want of faith, 
and want of principle, ruin and render useless the noble 
qualities of the first ; and on the other hand, steadfast 
purpose, resolute sacrifice of present to future, and fixed 
principle, purify, elevate, turn to lasting good even the 
baser qualities of the second. And, yet again, whether 
in the two brothers or their descendants, we see how in 
each the good and evil strove together and worked their 
results almost to the end. Esau and his race cling still 
to the outskirts of the Chosen people. " Meddle not," 
it was said in after times, " with your brethren the chil- 
dren of Esau, for I will not give you of their land, because 
I have given Mount Seir to Esau for a possession." 
Israel, on the other hand, is outcast, thwarted, deceived, 
disappointed, bereaved— " all these things are against 
me ;" in him, and in his progeny also, the curse of Ebalis 
always blended with the blessings of Gerizim. How 
hardly Esau was condemned, how hardly Jacob was 
saved! We are kept in long and just suspense; the 
prodigal may, as far as human eye can see, be on his 
way home ; the blameless son, who " has been in his 
father's house always," may be shutting himself out. Yet 



10 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



the final issue, to which on the whole this primitive 
history calls our attention, is the same which is borne out 
by the history of the Church even in these latter days of 
complex civilization. There is, after all, a weakness in 
selfish worldliness, for which no occasional impulse can 
furnish any adequate compensation, even though it be 
the generosity of an Arabian chief, or the inimitable good 
nature of an English king. There is a nobleness in 
principle and faith which cannot be wholly destroyed, 
even though it be marred by the hardness or the duplicity 
of the Jew, or the Jesuit, or the Puritan. 

Jacob's going out from Beersheba towards Haran, is, 
if one may so say, the first retrograde movement in the 
history of the Church. Was the migration of Abraham to 
be reversed ? Was the westward tide of events to roll 
back upon itself ? Was the Chosen Race to sink back 
into the life of Mesopotamian deserts ? But the first halt 
of the wanderer revealed his future destinies. " The sun 
went down ; " the night gathered round ; he was on the 
central thoroughfare, on the hard backbone of the moun- 
tains of Palestine; the ground was strewn with wide 
sheets of bare rock ; here and there stood up isolated 
fragments like ancient Druidical monuments. On the 
hard ground he lay down for rest, and in the visions of 
the night the rough stones formed themselves into a vast 
staircase, reaching into the depth of the wide and open 



JACOB. 



1 1 



sky, which, without any interruption of tent or tree, was 
stretched over the sleeper's head. On that staircase were 
ascending and descending the messengers of God ■ and 
from above there came the Divine Voice which told the 
houseless wanderer that, little as he thought it, he had 
a protector there and everywhere ; that even in this bare 
and open thoroughfare, in no consecrated grove or cave, 
"The Lord was in this place, though he knew it not." 
" This was Bethel, the House of God, and this was the 
gate of Heaven." 

The monument, whatever it was, that was still in after 
ages ascribed to the erection of Jacob, must have been, 
like so many described or seen in other times and coun- 
tries, a rude copy of the natural features of the place, as 
at Carnac in Brittany, the cromlechs of Wales or Cornwall, 
or the walls of Tiryns, where the play of nature and the 
simplicity of art are almost undistinguishable. In all ages 
of primitive history, such monuments are, if we may so call 
them, the earliest ecclesiastical edifices. In Greece there 
were rude stones at Delphi, still visible in the second cen- 
tury, anterior to any temple, and, like the rock of Bethel, 
anointed with oil by the Pilgrims who came thither. In 
Northern Africa, Arnobius, after his conversion, describes 
the kind of fascination which had drawn him towards one 
of these aged stones, streaming and shining with the sacred 
oil which had been poured upon it The black stone of 



12 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



the Arabian Caaba reaches back to the remotest antiquity 
of which history or tradition can speak, 

In all these rough anticipations of a fixed structure or 
building, we trace the beginnings of what in the case of 
Jacob is first distinctly called " Bethel," the house of God, 
" the place of worship," — the "Beit-allah" of Mecca, the 
" Bsetulia " of the early Phoenician worship. When we see 
the rude remains of Abury in our own country, there is a 
strange interest in the thought that they are the first archi- 
tectural witness of English religion. Even so the pillar 
or cairn or cromlech of Bethel, must have been looked 
upon by the. Israelites, and may still be looked upon in 
thought by us, as the precursor of every " House of God," 
that has since arisen in the Jewish or Christian world— 
the temple, the cathedral, the church, the chapel ; nay, 
more, of those secret places of worship that are marked 
by no natural beauty and seen by no human eye — the 
closet, the catacomb, the thoroughfare, of the true 
worshipper. There was neither in the aspect, nor in the 
ground of Bethel any "Religio loci" but the place was no 
less " dreadful," " full of awe." The stone of Bethel 
remained as the memorial that an all-encompassing Provi- 
dence watches over its chosen instruments, however 
unconscious at the time of what and where they are. 
" The shepherd of the stone of Israel was one of the 
earliest names by which the ' God of Jacob' was known." 



JACOB . 



13 



The vision of the way reaching from heaven to earth 
received its highest application in a Divine manifestation, 
yet more universal and unexpected. Not in the temple 
or on the High Priest, but on the despised Nazarene, the 
Son of Man, was Nathanael to see the fulfilment of 
Jacob's vision, " the angels of God ascending " into the 
open heaven, and "descending" on the common earth. 

The chief interest of the story of Jacob's twenty years' 
service with Laban, lies in its re-opening of the relations 
between the settlers in Palestine and the original tribe of 
Mesopotamia, which appeared on Abraham's migration 

to have been closed " Then Jacob ' lifted up his 

feet ' and came into the land of the ' children ' of the 
east. And he looked and behold a well in the field ; 
and lo ! three flocks of sheep lying by it, and a great 
stone was on the well's mouth." The shepherds were 
there; they had advanced far away from "the city of 
Nabor." It was not the well outside the walls, with the 
hewn staircase down which Rebekah descended with the 
pitcher on her head. Rachel comes, guiding her father's 
flocks, like the daughter of the Bedouin chiefs at the 
present day; and Jacob claims the Bedouin right of 
cousinship : "And it came to pass when Jacob saw Rachel, 
the daughter of Laban his mother's brother, and the 
sheep of Laban his mother's brother, [observe the sim- 
plicity of the juxtaposition], that Jacob went near and rolled 



14 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock 
of Laban his mother's brother; and Jacob kissed Rachel, 
and lifted up his voice and wept." Then begins the long 
contest of cunning and perseverance, in which true love 
wins the game at last against selfish gain. Seven years, 
the service of a slave, thrice over, did Jacob pay. He 
is the faithful eastern " good shepherd ; " that which was 
torn of beasts he brought not unto his master; he bare the 
loss of it; of his hand " did his hard taskmaster" require 
it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night ; in the day 
the drought " of the desert" consumed him, and the frost 
in the cold eastern nights, " and his sleep departed from 
him." In Edessawas laid up for many centuries what pro- 
fessed to be the tent in which he had guarded his master's 
flocks. And at last his fortunes were built up ; the slave 
became a prince ; and the second migration took place 
from Mesopotamia into Palestine, " with much cattle, 
'with male and female slaves,' with camels and with 

asses." 

It was the termination of the dark and uncertain pre- 
lude of Jacob's life. He is now the exile returning home 
after years of wandering. He is the chief, raised by his 
own efforts and God's providence to a high place amongst 
the tribes of the earth. He stands like Abraham on the 
heights of Bethel ; like Moses in the heights of Pisgah ; 
overlooking from the watch-tower, " the Mizpeh" of Gilead ; 



JACOB. 



15 



the whole extent of the land, which is to be called after his 
name. The deep valley of the Jordan, stretched below, 
recalls the mighty change of fortune. "With my staff 
I passed over the Jordan, and now I am become two 
bands." The wide descent of the valley southward 
towards the distant mountains of Seir, reminds him of 
the contest which may be in store for him from the 
advancing tribe of his brother of Edom. But the story 
sets before us a deeper than any mere external change of 
struggle. It is as though the twenty years of exile and 
servitude had wrought their work. Every incident and 
word is fraught with a double meaning ; in every instance 
earthly and spiritual images are put one over against the 
other, hardly to be seen in our English version, but in 
the original clearly intended. Other forms than his own 
company are surrounding him ; another Face than that 
of his brother Esau is to welcome his return, to the land 
of his birth and kindred. He was become two " bands " 
or " hosts ; " he had divided his people, his flocks and 
herds and camels into two "hosts he had sent "mes- 
sengers " before to announce his approach. But as Jacob 
went on his way, the "messengers" of God met him; 
as when he had seen them ascending and descending the 
stair of heaven at Bethel; and "when Jacob saw them 
he said, This is God's host and he called the name of that 
place Mahanaim;" that is "The Two hosts." The name 



l6 SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



was handed on to after ages, and the place became the 
sanctuary of the Transjordanic tribes, he was still on 
the heights of the Transjordanic hills beyond the deep 
defile where the Jabbok, as its name implies, "wrestles" 
with the mountains through which it descends to the 
Jordan. In the dead of night he sent his wives and sons, 
and all that he had across the defile, and he was left 
alone ; and in the darkness and stillness, in the crisis of 
his life, in the agony of his fear for the issue of the 
morrow, there " wrestled " with him one whose name he 
knew not until the dawn rose over the hills of Gilead. 
They "wrestled," and he prevailed; yet not without 
bearing away marks of the conflict. He is saved, as 
elsewhere, in his whole career, so here ; " saved, yet so 
as by fire ? " In that struggle, in that seal and crown of 
his life, he wins his new name. " Thy name shall be 
called no more Jacob "the supplanter," — but Israel 
" the prince of God," — for as a prince hast thou power 
with God and with man, and hast prevailed." The dark 
crafty character of the youth, though never wholly lost— 
for "Jacob " he still was called to the end of his days — has 
been by trial and affliction changed into the princelike, 
godlike character of his manhood. And what was he 
with whom he had wrestled in the visions of the night, 
and who had vanished from his grasp as the day was 
breaking ? " Tell me, I pray thee, thy name." And He 



17 



said, "wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?" 
And he blessed him there, and Jacob called the name 
of the place Peniel (that is "the face of God") for I 
have seen God face to face and my life is preserved. 
And as he passed over Penuel, the sun, of which the 
the dawn had been already breaking, "burst" upon him ; 

and he " halted upon his thigh." 

The dreaded meeting with Esau has passed ; the two 
brothers retain their characters throughout the interview : 
the generosity of the one, and the caution of the other. 
And for the last time Esau retires to make room for 
Jacob ; he leaves to him the land of his inheritance, and 
disappears on his way to the wild mountains of Seir. 
In those wild mountains, in the red hills of Edom, in the 
caves and excavations to which the soft sandstone rocks 
so readily lend themselves, in the cliffs which afterwards 
gave to the settlement, the name of "Sela" or " Petra," 
lingered the ancient aboriginal tribe of the Horites or 
dwellers in the holes of the rock. These " the children 
of Esau succeeded and destroyed from before them and 
dwelt in their stead." It was the rough rocky country 
described in their father's blessing : a savage dwelling, 
" away from the fatness of the earth and the dew of 
heaven;" by the sword they were to live; a race of hunters 
among the mountains ; their nearest allies, the Arabian 
tribe Nebaioth. Petra, the mysterious secluded city, 



iS 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



with its thousand caves, is the lasting monument of their 

local habitation 

So we part from the house of Esau, and return to the 
latter days of Jacob. He, too, moves onward. From 
the summit of Mount Gerizim the eye rests on the wide 
opening in the Eastern hills beyond the Jordan, which 
marks the issue of the Jabbok into the Jordan Valley. 
Through that opening, straight toward Gerizim and 
Shechem, Jacob descends " in peace and triumph.'' 

At every stage of his progress henceforward we are 
reminded that it is the second, and not the first settle, 
ment of Palestine, that is now unfolding itself. It is no 
longer as in the case of Abraham, the purely pastoral 
life ; it is the gradual transition from the pastoral to the 
agricultural. Jacob, on his first descent from the downs 
of Gilead, is no longer a mere dweller in tents ; he 
" builds him an house \ " he makes " booths " or " huts ' 
for his cattle, and therefore the name of the place is 
called " Succoth." He advances across the Jordan \ he 
comes to Shechem in the heart of Palestine, whither 
Abraham had come before him. But it is no longer the 
uninhabited " place " and grove ; it is u the city " of 
Shechem,and " before the city " his tent is pitched. And 
he comes not merely as an Arabian wanderer, but as with 
fixed aim and fixed habitation in view. He sets his eye 
on the rich plain which stretches eastward of the city, 



JACOB. 



19 



now, as eighteen hundred years ago, and then as twenty 
centuries before, "white already to the harvest," with its 
waving cornfields. This, and not a mere sepulchre like 
the cave of Machpelah, is the possession which he pur- 
chases from the inhabitants of the land. The very piece 
of money with which he buys the land are not merely 
weighed, as in the bargain with Ephron ; they are stamped 
with the earliest mark of coinage, the figure of the lambs 
of the flocks. In this vale of Shechem the Patriarch rests, 
as in a permanent home. Beersheba, Hebron, even 
Bethel, are nothing to him in comparison with this one 
chosen portion, which is to descend to his favourite 

son 

It is with the latest portion of Jacob's life that are most 
clearly interwoven those cords of natural and domestic 
affection which so bind his name round our hearts. He 
revisits then his old haunts at Bethel and Beersheba. 
The ancient servant of his house, Deborah, his mother's 
nurse, the only link which survived between him and the 
face which he should see no more, dies, and is not for- 
gotten, but is buried beneath the hill of Bethel, under the 
oak well known to the many who passed that way in later 
times as Allonbachuth, " The Oak of Tears." They 
draw near to a place then known only by its ancient 
Caananite name, and now for the first time mentioned in 
history, " Ephratah, which is Bethlehem." The village 

C 2 



20 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



appears spread along its narrow ridge, but they are not 
to reach it. " There was but a little way to come to 
Ephrath, and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labour? 
And it came to pass, as her soul was in depart- 
ing, for she died, that she called the name of the child 
Ben-oni (that is, "the son of sorrow"); but his father 
called him Ben-jamin (that is, " the son of my right hand "). 
And Rachel died and was buried in the way to Ephrath. 
And Jacob set a pillar on her grave, that is the pillar of 
Rachel's grave unto this day." The pillar has long dis- 
appeared, but her memory long remained. She still lived 
on, in Joseph's dreams. Her name still clung to the 
nuptial benediction of the villagers of Bethlehem. After 
the allotment of the country to the several tribes, the 
territory of the Benjamites was extended by a long strip 
far into the south, to include the sepulchre of their 
beloved ancestress. When the infants of Bethlehem were 
slaughtered by Herod, it seemed to the Evangelist as 
though the voice of Rachel were heard weeping for her 
children from her neighbouring grave. 

In the mixture of agricultural and pastoral life which 
now gathers round him, is laid the train of the last and 
most touching incidents of Jacob's story. It is whilst 
they are feeding their father's flocks together, that the 
fatal envy arises against the favourite son. It is whils 
they are binding the sheaves in the well-known cornfield 



JACOB. 



21 



that Joseph's sheaf stands upright in his dream. On the 
confines of the same field at Shechem, the brothers were 
feeding their flocks, when Joseph was sent from Hebron 
to "see whether it were well with his brethren and well 
with the flocks, and to bring his father word again." And 
from Shechem he followed them to the two wells of 
Dothan, in the passes of Manasseh, when the caravan of 
Arabian merchants passed by, and he disappeared from 
his father's eyes. His history belongs henceforth to a 
wider sphere. The glimpse of Egypt, opened to us for a 
moment in the life of Abraham, now spread into a vast 
and permanent prospect. 

The story of the descent into Egypt, too simple to 
need any elaborate elucidation, is a fitting close to the 
life of Jacob. Once more he is to set forth on his 
pilgrimage. He came to the frontier plain of Beersheba ; 
he received the assurance that beyond that frontier he 
was to descend yet further into Egypt. He " went down " 
from the steppes to Beersheba; he crossed the desert and 
met his son on the border of the cultivated land; he was 
brought into the presence of the great Pharaoh ; he saw 
his race established in the land of Egypt And then the 
time drew near that Israel must die, and his one thought, 
oftentimes repeated, was that his bones should not rest 
in that strange land, not in pyramid or painted chamber, 
but in the cell that he had "digged for himself" in the 



22 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



primitive sepulchre of his fathers. So his body was 
embalmed after the manner of the Egyptians ; and a vast 
funeral procession bore it away ; the asses and the camels 
of the pastoral tribe mingling with the chariots and horse- 
men characteristic of Egypt. They came (so the narra- 
tive seems to imply) not by the direct road which the 
Patriarch's had hitherto traversed on their way to Egypt 
by El-Arish, but round the long circuit by which Moses 
afterwards led their descendents, till they arrived on the 
banks of the Jordan. Further than this the Egyptian 
escort came not. But the Valley of the Jordan resounded 
with the loud shrill lamentations peculiar to their cere- 
monial of mourning, and with the funeral games with 
which, then as now, the Arabs encircle the tomb of 
a departed chief. From this double tradition the spot 
was known in after times as " the meadow," or " the 
mourning," of the Egyptians, Abel-Mizraim ; and as 
Beth-hogla, "the house of the encircling dance." And 
his sons carried him into the land of Canaan and buried 

him in the cave of the field of Machpelah And 

Joseph returned into Egypt, he and all his brethren, and 
all that went up with him, after he had buried his father ! 



Jewish Church, i., p. 53. 



DEBORAH. 



r 7^HE victory of Deborah and Barak is one of the 
crowning events of early Jewish history. It is told 
both in prose and poetry, and the poem is one of the 
most incontestable remains of antiquity that the Sacred 
Records contain, and the increased pleasure and 
instruction with which we are enabled to xead it 
furnish a signal proof of the gain added to our Biblical 
knowledge by the advance of Biblical criticism. In 
the story of Deborah and Sisera, we come across the 
tragic vein of the sacred history in its grandest style. 
The power of the northern kings, which Joshua had 
broken down at the waters of Merom, revived under a 
second Jabin, also king of Hazor. The formidable 
chariots, as before, overran the territories of the adja- 
cent tribes. The whole country was disorganised with 



2 4 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



terror. The obscure tortuous paths, became the only 
means of communication. As long afterwards, in the 
time of Saul, regular weapons disappeared from the 
oppressed population. " There was not a spear or 
shield seen among forty thousand in Israel." In this 
general depression the national spirit was revived by 
one whose appearance is full of significance. On the 
heights of Ephraim, on the central thoroughfare of Pales- 
tine, near the sanctuary of Bethel, stood two famous trees, 
both in after-times called by the same name. One was 
" the oak-tree," or " Terebinth " " of Deborah," under- 
neath which was buried with many tears, the nurse of 
Rebekah. The other was a solitary palm, known in after- 
times as " the palm-tree of Deborah." Under this palm, 
as Saul afterwards under the pomegranate tree of Migron, 
as S. Louis under the oak-tree of Vincennes, dwelt Debo- 
rah the wife of Lapidoth, to whom the sons of Israel 
came up to receive her wise answers. She is the magni- 
ficent impersonation of the free spirit of the Jewish 
people and of Jewish life. On the coins of the Roman 
empire, Judaea is represented as a woman seated under a 
palm-tree, captive and weeping. It is the contrast of 
that figure which will best place before us the character 
and call of Deborah. It is the same Judaean palm, under 
whose shadow she sits, but not with downcast eyes and 
folded hands, and extinguished hopes ; with all the fire of 



DEBORAH. 



25 



faith, and energy, eager for the battle, confident of the 
victory. As the German prophetess Velleda roused her 
people against the invaders from Rome, as the simple 
peasant girl of France, who by communing with myste- 
rious angels' voices roused her countrymen against the 
English dominion, when princes and statesmen had well- 
nigh given up the cause,— so the heads of Israel " ceased, 
and ceased, until that she, Deborah, arose, that she arose 
a mother in Israel." Her appearance was like a new 
epoch. They chose new chiefs, that came as new gods 
among them (Judg. v. 8). It was she who turned her 
eyes and the eyes of the nation to the fitting leader. As 
always in these wars, he was to come from the tribe that 
most immediately suffered from the yoke of the oppressor. 
High up in the north was toe sanctuary of the tribe of 
Naphtali— Kadesh-Naphtaii In this remote sanc- 
tuary lived a chief who bore the significant name— 
"Barak"— lightning! His fame must have been wide- 
spread to have reached the prophetess in her remote 
dwelling at Bethel. From his native place she sum- 
moned him to her side, and delivered to him her 
prophetic command. He, as if oppressed by the 
presence of a loftier spirit than his own, refuses to act, 
unless she were with him to guide his movements, and to 
name the very day which should be auspicious for his 
effort : " For I know not the day on which the Lord will 



26 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



send his good angel with me." She replies at once with 
the Hebrew emphasis : " I will go. I will go ! " adding 
the reservation, that the honour should not rest with the 
man who thus leaned upon a woman, but that a woman 
should reap the glory of the day of which a woman had 
been the adviser. It was from Kedesh that the insur- 
rection, thus organised, spread from tribe to tribe .... It 
was a general revival of the national spirit, such as rarely 
occurred. The leaders are described as filling their places 
with an ardour worthy of their position. " The chiefs be- 
came the chiefs " in deed, as well as in name. " The 
lawgivers of Israel willingly offered themselves for the 
people." " The Lord came down amongst the mighty." 
And to this the nation responded with a readiness, un- 
like their usual sluggishness, as under Gideon and Saul. 
" The people willingly offered themselves." " They that 
rode on white asses, they that sate on rich carpets of state, 
they that humbly walked by the way " (Judg. v. 2), all 
joined in the solemn enterprise. 

The muster-place was Mount Tabor. The enemy were 
not without tidings of this insurrection. Close beside 
Kadesh-Naphtali was a tribe, hovering between Israel and 
Canaan, through which thisinformation came (Judg. iv. 1 1). 
From Harosheth of the Gentiles came down the Canaanite 
host, with the chariots of iron, in which, after the manner ol 
their countrymen, they trusted as invincible. Their leader 



DEBORAH. 



27 



the first, indeed the only, commander of whom we hear 
by name on the adverse side of these long wars, was 
himself a native of Harosheth, and a potentate of suffi- 
cient grandeur to have his mother recognised in the 
surrounding tribes as a kind of queen-mother of the 
place; and whose family traditions had struck such root, 
that the name of " Sisera" occurs long afterwards in the 
history, and the great Jewish rabbi, Akiba, claimed to be 
descended from him .... From the arched summit of 
Tabor, Deborah must have watched the gradual drawing 
of the enemy towards the spot of her predicted triumph. 
She raised the cry, which twice over occurs in the story 
of the battle, " Arise, Barak." She gave with unhesitating 
confidence to the doubting troops the augury which he 
had asked before the insurrection began—" This ! this 
and no other, is the day when the Lord shall deliver 
Sisera into thy hand." Down from the wooded heights 
descended Barak and his ten thousand men. The ac- 
counts of his descent emphatically repeat that he was 
"on foot," and thus forcibly contrast his infantry with the 
horses and chariots of his enemies. 

The final encampment of the Canaanitish army was 
beside the numerous rivulets which, descending from the 
hills of Megiddo into the Kishon, as it flows in a broader 
stream through the corn-fields below, may well have been 
known as " the waters of Megiddo." It was at this criti- 



25 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



cal moment that a tremendous storm of sleet and hail 
gathered from the east, and burst over the plain, driving 
full in the faces of the advancing Canaanites. "The 
stars," in their courses, fought "with Sisera." As in like 
case in the battle of Cressy, the slingers and the archers 
were disabled by the rain, the swordsmen were crippled 
by the biting cold. The Israelites, on the other hand, 
having the storm on their rear, were less troubled by it, 
and derived confidence from the consciousness of this 
Providential aid. The confusion became great. The " rain 
descended," the four rivulets of Megiddo were swelled 
into powerful streams, the torrent of the Kishon rose into 
a flood, the plain became a morass. The chariots and the 
horses, which should have gained the day for the Canaan- 
ites, turned against them. They became entangled in the 
swamp; the torrent of Kishon — the torrent famous through 
former ages — swept them away in its furious eddies ; and 
in that wild confusion " the strength " of the Canaanites 
"was trodden down," and "the horsehoofs stamped and 
struggled by the means of the plungings and plungings 
of the mighty chiefs " in the quaking morass and the 
rising streams. Far and wide the vast army fled, far 
through the eastern branch of the plain by Endor. There, 
between Tabor and the Little Hermon, a carnage took 
place, long remembered, in which the corpses lay fatten- 
ing the ground. Onwards from thence they still fled 



DEBORAH. 



29 



over the northern hills to the city of their great captain- 
Harosheth of the Gentiles. Fierce and rapid was the 
pursuit. One city, by which the pursuers and pursued 
passed, gave no help. " Curse ye Meroz, curse ye with 
a curse its inhabitants, because they came not to the help 
of Jehovah." So, as it would seem, spoke the prophetic 
voice of Deborah. We can imagine what was the crime 
and what the punishment from the analogous case of 
Succoth and Penuel, which, in like manner, gave no help 
when Gideon pursued the Midianites. The curse was 
so fully carried out that the name of Meroz never again 
appears in the sacred history. Of the Canaanite fugitives, 
none reached their own mountain fortress: even the 
tidings of the disaster were long delayed. From the high 
latticed windows of Harosheth, the inmates of Sisera's 
harem, his mother, and her attendant princesses, are on 
the stretch of expectation for the sight of the war-car of 
their champion, with the lesser chariots around him. 
They sustain their hopes by counting over the spoils that 
he will bring home— rich embroidery for themselves ; 
female slaves for each of the chiefs. The prey would 
never come. That well-known chariot of iron would never 
return. It was left to rust on the banks of the Kishon, 
like Roderick's by the shores of the Guadalete. In the 
moment of the general panic, Sisera had sprung from his 
seat, and escaped on foot over the northern mountains 



30 SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



towards Hazor. It must have been three days after the 
battle that he reached a spot, which seems to gather into 
itself, as in the last scene of an eventful drama, all the cha- 
racters of the previous acts. Between Hazor and Kadesh 
Naphtali, the birth-place of Barak, lies a green plain which 
joins almost imperceptibly with that overhung by Kadesh- 
Naphtali itself. This plain is still, and was then, studded 
with massive terebinths. These trees were marked in 
that early age by a sight unusual in this part of Palestine. 
Underneath the spreading branches of one of them there 
dwelt, unlike the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, 
a settlement of Bedouins, living, as if in the desert, with 
their tents pitched, and their camels and asses around 
them, whence the spot had acquired the name of "The 
Terebinth," or " Oak, of the Unloading of tents." Between 
Heber, the chief of this little colony, and the King of 
Hazor, there was peace. It would even seem that from 
him, or from his tribe, thus planted on the debateable 
ground between Kedesh and Hazor, Sisera had derived 
the first intelligence of the insurrection (Judg. iv. 12). 
Thither, therefore, it was that, confident in Arab fidelity, 
the wearied general turned his steps. He approached 
the tent, not of Heber, but for the sake of greater security, 
the harem of the chieftainess Jael, the " Gazelle." It 
was a fit name for a Bedouin's wife — especially for one 
whose family had come from the rocks of Engedi, u the 



DEBORAH. 



31 



spring of the wild goat," or " chamois." The long, low 
tent was spread under the tree, and from under its cover 
she advanced to meet him with the accustomed re- 
verence. "Turn in, my Lord, and fear not." She 
covered him with a rough wrapper or rug, on the slightly 
raised divan inside the tent ; and he, exhausted with his 
flight, lay down, and then, lifting up his head, begged for 
a drop of water to cool his parched lips. She brought 
him more than water. She unfastened the mouth of the 
large skin, such as stand by Arab tents, which was full 
of sweet milk from the herds or the camels. She offered, 
as for a sacrificial feast in the bowl used for illustrious 
guests, the thick curded milk, frothed like cream, and 
the weary man drank, and then (secure in the Bedouin 
hospitality, which regards as doubly sure the life of one 
who had eaten and drunk at the hands of his host) he 
sank into a deep sleep, as she again drew round him the 
rough covering which for a moment she had withdrawn. 
Then she saw that her hour was come. She pulled up 
from the ground the large pointed peg or nail which 
fastened down the ropes of the tent, and held it in her 
left hand ; with her right hand she grasped the ponderous 
hammer or wooden mallet ot the workmen of the tribe. 
Her attitude, her weapon, her deed, are described both in 
the historic and poetic account of the event, as if fixed 
in the national mind. She stands like the personification 



34 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



from the attempt of the old paganism to recover its 
ascendency in the Holy Land. It ranks, in the sacred 
history, next after the battle of Beth-horon, amongst the 
religious battles of the world. 

And, therefore, not unworthily of this object in the 
song of Deborah we have the only prophetic utterance 
that breaks the silence between Moses and Samuel. 
Hers is the one voice of inspiration (in the true sense of 
the word) that breaks out in the Book of Judges. In her 
song are gathered up all the lessons which the rest of the 
book teaches indirectly. Hers is the life, both in her own 
history and in the whole period, that expresses the 
feelings and thoughts of thousands, who were silent till 
" she, Deborah, arose a mother in Israel." Hers is the 
prophetic word that gives an utterance and a sanction 
to the thoughts of freedom, of independence, of national 
unity, such as they had never had before in the world, and 
have rarely had since. 

In this religious aspect of the battle, this prophetic 
character of its chief leader, lies the difficulty or the 
instruction, suggested by her benediction of the assasina- 
tion of Sisera Deborah it is true, spoke as a pro- 
phetess, but it was as a prophetess enlightened only with 
a very small portion of that divine light which was to go 
on brightening ever more and more unto the perfect day. 
She saw clearly for a little way— but it was only for 



DEBORAH. 



35 



a little way. Beyond that, the darkness of the time still 
rested upon her vision. 

And when, from the inspiration of Deborah, we pass 
to the deed of Jael, we must be content there also to 
admit the same imperfection of moral perceptions, which 
the Highest authority has already recognised m the 
clearest terms. " Ye have heard that it hath been said, 
thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy;" 
Jael did hate her enemy with a perfect hatred. For the 
sake of destroying him, she broke through all the bonds 
of hospitality, of gratitude and of truth. But then it must 
not be forgotten that if there is any portion of the Sacred 
History where we should expect these bonds to be 
loosened, and a higher light obscured, it would be m 
this period of disorder, "When there was no king m 
Israel, and when every one"-the Israelite warrior here 
-the Arabian chieftainess there-" did what was right m 

his or her eyes." 

Why should not a blessing, even a divine blessing, 
according to the only light which they were then able to 
bear, be bestowed on an act, such as the most philosophic 
observer does not scruple to commend, as he looks back 
on the various imperfect acts of heroism and courage 
that have been wrought in troubled and violent times. 

Jewish Church, 1. 3*7- 



BALAAM. 



TT is one of the striking proofs of the Divine univer- 
sality of the Old Testament, that the veil is from time 
to time drawn aside, and other characters than those 
which belonged to the chosen people appear in the 
distance, fraught with an instruction which transcends 
the limits of the Jewish Church, and not only in place, 
but in time, far outruns the teaching of any peculiar age 
or nation. Such is the discussion of the profoundest 
questions of religious philosophy in the book of the 
Gentile Job. Such is the appearance of the Gentile 
Prophet Balaam. He is one of those characters of whom, 
while so little is told that we seem to know nothing of 
him, yet that little raises him at once to the highest pitch 
of interest. His home is beyond the Euphrates, amongst 
the mountains where the vast streams of Mesopotamia 



BALAAM. 



37 



have their rise. But his fame is known across the 
Assyrian desert, through the Arabian tribes, down to the 
very shores of the Dead Sea. He ranks as a warrior- 
chief (by that combination of soldier and prophet, already 
seen in Moses himself) with the five kings of Midian. 
He is regarded throughout the whole of the East as a 
Prophet, whose blessing or whose curse is irresistible, the 
rival, the possible conqueror of Moses. In his career is 
seen that recognition of Divine inspiration outside the 
chosen people, which the narrowness of modern times has 
been so eager to deny, but which the Scriptures are 
always ready to acknowledge, and, by acknowledging, 
admit within the pale of the teachers of the Universal 
Church the higher spirits of every age and of every 
nation. 

His character, Oriental and Primeval though it be, is 
delineated with that fineness of touch which has rendered 
it the store-house of theologians and moralists in the 
most recent ages of the Church. Three great divines 
have from different points of view drawn out, without ex- 
hausting, the subtle phases of his greatness and of his fall. 
The self-deception which persuades him in every case that 
the sin which he commits may be brought within the rules 
of conscience and revelation ; the dark shade cast over a 
noble course by standing always on the ladder of advance- 
ment, and by the suspense of a worldly ambition never 



38 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



satisfied ; the combination of the purest form of religious 
belief with a standard of action immeasurably below it; 
these have given to the story of Balaam, the son of 
Beor, a hold over the last hundred years which it never 
can have had over any period of the human mind less 
critical or less refined. 

One feels a kind of awe in the gradual preparation 
with which he is brought before us, as if in the for- 
boding of some great catastrophe. The King of the 
civilized Moabites unites with the elders, or sheykhs, 
of the Bedouin Midianites, to seek for aid against the 
powerful nation who (to use their own peculiarly pastoral 
image) " licked up all that were round about them, as 
the ox licked up the grass of the field " of Moab. Twice, 
across the whole length of the Assyrian desert, the mes- 
sengers, with the oriental bribes of divination in their 
hands, are sent to conjure forth the mighty seer from his 
distant home. In the permission to go, when, once 
refused, he presses for a favourable answer, which at last 
comes, though leading him to ruin, we see the peculiar 
turn of teaching which characterises the purest of the 
ancient heathen oracles. It is the exact counterpart of 
the elevated rebuke of the oracle at Cumae to Aristodicus, 
and of the oracle of Delphi to Glaucus. Reluctantly, at 
last, he comes. The dreadful apparition on the way, the 
desperate resistance of the terrified animal, the ferocious 



BALAAM. 



39 



determination of the prophet to advance, the voice, how- 
ever explained, which breaks from the dumb creature that 
has saved his life, all heighten the expectation of the 
message that he is to deliver. When Balaam and Balak 
first meet, the short dialogue, preserved not by the 
Mosaic historian but by the Prophet Micah, at once 
exhibits the agony of the king, and the lofty conceptions 
of the great seer. " O my people, remember what Balak, 
King of Moab, consulted, and what Balaam, the son of 
Beor, answered."—" Wherewith shall I come before the 
Lord, and bow myself before the High God ? Shall I come 
before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? 
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with 
ten thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall L give my first-born 
for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my 
soul r So speaks the superstitious feeling of all times, 
but, in a literal sense, of the royal house of Moab, always 
ready, in a national crisis, to appease offended heaven 
by the sacrifice of the heir to the throne. The reply is 
such as breathes the very essence of the Prophetic spirit, 
such as had at that early time hardly expressed itself 
distinctly even within the Mosaic revelation itself. " He 
hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth 
the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love 
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" 

If this is, indeed, intended to describe the first meeting 



4® 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



of the king and the seer, it enhances the pathos of the 
struggle which continues through each successive inter- 
view. Sometimes the one only, sometimes both together, 
are seen striving to overpower the voice of conscience 
and of God with the fumes of sacrifice, yet always failing 
in the attempt, which the Prophet had himself in the 
outset declared to be vain. The eye follows the Two, 
as they climb upwards from height to height along the 
extended range, to the " high places " dedicated to Baal, 
on " the top of the rocks," — " the bare hill " close above 
it — the " cultivated field " of the watchmen on the top of 
Pisgah — to the peak where stood " the sanctuary of Peor, 
that looketh toward the waste." It is at this point that 
the scene has been caught in the well-known lines of the 
poet Keble :— 

" O for a sculptor's hand, 

That thou might'st take thy stand, 
Thy wild hair floating on the eastern breeze, 

Thy tranced yet open gaze, 

Fixed on the desert haze, 
As one who deep in heav'n some airy pageant sees. 

" In outline dim and vast, 

Their fearful shadows cast 
The giant forms of empire on their way 

To ruin : one by one 

They tow'r and they are gone. 
Yet in the Prophet's soul the dreams of avarice stay." 

Behind him lay the vast expanse of desert extending 



BALAAM. 



41 



to the shores of his native Assyrian river. On his left 
were the red mountains of Edom and Seir : opposite were 
the dwelling-places of the Kenite, and the rocky fast- 
nesses of Engedi; further still was the dim outline of the 
Arabian wilderness, where ruled the then, powerful tribe 
of Amalek j immediately below him lay the vast encamp- 
ment of Israel amongst the acacia-groves of Abel Shittim 
— like the watercourses of the mountains, like the hanging 
gardens beside his own river Euphrates, with their aro- 
matic shrubs and their wide-spreading cedars. Beyond 
them, on the western side of Jordan, rose the hills of 
Palestine, with glimpses through their valleys of ancient 
cities towering on their crested heights. And beyond all, 
though he could not see it with his bodily vision, he knew 
well that there rolled the deep waters of the great sea, 
with the Isles of Greece, the Isle of Chittim — a world 
of which the first beginnings of life were just stirring, of 
which the very name here first breaks upon our ears. 

These are the points indicated in the view which lay 
before the Prophet as he stood on the watchers' field, on 
the top of Pisgah. What was the vision which unrolled 
itself as he heard the words of God, as he saw the vision 
of the Almighty, "falling" prostrate in the prophetic 
trance, "but having the eyes" of his mind and spirit 
"open?" The outward forms still remained. He still 
saw the tents below, goodly in their array ; he still saw 



4 2 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



the rocks and hills, and distant desert; but, as his 
thought glanced from height to height, and from valley 
to mountain, the future fortunes of the nations who dwelt 
there unfolded themselves in dim succession, revolving 
round and from the same central object. 

From the midst of that vast encampment he seemed to 
see streams as of water flowing to and fro over the val- 
leys, giving life to the dry desert and to the salt sea. He 
seemed to see a form as of a mighty lion couched amidst 
the thickets, or on the mountain fastnesses of Judah, "and 
none should rouse him up;" or the "wild bull" raging 
from amidst the archers of Ephraim, trampling down 
his . enemies, piercing them through with the well-known 
arrows of the tribe. And yet again, in the more distant 
future, he "saw, but not now," — he "beheld, but not 
nigh," — as with the intuition of his Chaldean art, — " a 
star," bright as those of the far eastern sky, " come out 
of Jacob ;" and " a sceptre," like the shepherd's staff that 
marked the ruler of " the tribe," rise out of " Israel ; " 
and then, as he watched the course of the surrounding 
nations, he saw how, one by one, they would fall, as fall 
they did, before the conquering sceptre of David, before 
the steady advance of that star which then, for the first 
time, rose out of Bethlehem. And, as he gazed, the 
vision became wider and wider still. He saw a time 
when a new tempest would break over all these countries 



BALAAM . 



45 



alike, from the remote east— from Assur, from his own 
native land of Assyria, "Assur shall carry thee away- 
captive." But at that word another scene opened before 
him, and a cry of horror burst from his lips: "Alas! 
who' shall live when God doeth this?" For his own 
nation, too, was to be at last overtaken. "For ships 
shall come from the coast of Chittim,"— from the island 
of Cyprus, which, as the only one visible from the heights 
of Palestine, was the one familiar link with the Western 
world—" and shall crush Assur and shall crush Eber, 
'the people beyond the Euphrates,' and, he also shall 
perish for ever." 

We know not to what precise events these words 
allude. But they indicate the first rise of the power of 
Greece and of Europe— the first conviction, as it has 
been well expressed, ut valesceret Occidens,— the first 
apprehension that the tide of Eastern conquest was rolled 
back, and at last from the Western Isles would come a 
power before which Asshur and Babylon, Assyria and 
Chaldaja, and Persia, no less than the wild hordes of the 
desert, would fade and " perish for ever " from the earth. 

It has often been debated, and no evidence now 
remains to prove, at what precise time this grandest of 
all its episodes was introduced into the Mosaic narrative. 
But, however this may be determined, the magnificence 
of the vision remains untouched ; and it stands in the 



44 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



sacred record, the first example of the prophetic utter- 
ances respecting the destinies of the world at large; 
founded, like all such utterances, on the objects imme- 
diately in the range of the vision of the seer, but including 
within their sweep a vast prospect beyond. Here first 
the Gentile world, not of the east only but of the west, 
bursts into view ; and here is the first sanction of that 
wide interest in the various races and empires of man- 
kind, not only as bearing on the fortunes of the chosen 
people, but for their own sakes also, which the narrow 
spirits of the Jewish Church first, and of the Christian 
Church since, have been so slow to acknowledge. Here, 
too, is exhibited, in its most striking form, the irresistible 
force of the prophetic impulse, overpowering, the baser 
spirit of the individual man. The spectacle of the host 
of Israel, even though seen only from its utmost skirts, 
is too much for him. The Divine message struggling 
within him is delivered in spite of his own sordid resist- 
ance. Many has been the Balaam, whom the force of 
truth or goodness from without, or the force of genius or 
conscience from within, has compelled to bless the 
enemies whom he was hired to curse, 

Like the seer of old, 
Who stood on Zophim, heaven controlFd. 

" And Balaam rose up and went, and returned to his 



BALAAM. 



45 



his own place." The sacred historian, as if touched with 
a feeling of the greatness of the Prophet's mission, drops 
the veil over its dark close. Only by the incidental 
notice (Numb. xxxi. 8, 16) of a subsequent part of the 
narrative, are we told how Balaam endeavoured to effect, 
by the licentious rites of the Arab tribes, the ruin which 
he had been unable to work by his curses ; and how, in 
the war of vengeance which followed, he met with his 

- , i Jewish Church, i. 189. 

mournful end. 



JEPHTHA II 



TEPHTHAH is the wild lawless freebooter. His 
irregular birth in the half civilised tribes beyond the 
Jordan, is the key-note to his life. The whole scene is 
laid in those pastoral uplands. Not Bethel, or Shiloh, 
but Mizpeh, the ancient watch-tower which witnessed 
the parting of Jacob and Laban, is the place of meeting. 
Amnion, the ancient ally of Israel against Og, is now the 
assailant. The war springs out of the disputes of that 
first settlement. The battle sweeps over that whole 
tract of forest, from Gilead to the borders of Moab. 
The quarrel which arises after the battle between the 
Transjordanic tribe and the proud Western Ephraimites 
is embittered by the recollection of taunts and quarrels, 
then, no doubt, full of gall and wormwood, now hardly 
intelligible. " Fugitives of Ephraim are ye : Gilead is 



JEPHTHAH. 47 



among the Ephraimites and among the Manassites." 
Was it, as Ewald conjectures, some allusion to the lost 
history' of the days when the half-tribe Manasseh sepa- 
rated from its Western brethren ? If it was, the Gileadites 
had now their turn-" the fugitives of the Ephraimites," 
as they are called in evident allusion to the former 
taunt, are caught in their fight at the fords of the Jordan, 
the scene of their victory over the Medianites, and ruth- 
lessly slain. 

In the savage taunt of Jephthah to the Ephraimites, 
compared with the mild reply of Gideon to the same 
insolent tribe, we have a measure of the inferiority of 
Eastern to Western Palestine-of the degree to which 
Jephthah sank below his age, and Gideon rose above it. 
But in his own country, as well as in the Church at large, 
it is the other part of Jephthah's story which has been 
most keenly remembered. The fatal vow at the battle of 
Aroer belongs naturally to the spasmodic efforts of the 
age; like the vows of Samson or Saul in the Jewish 
Church of this period, or of Clovis or Bruno in the 
middle ages. But its literal execution could hardly have 
taken place had it been undertaken by any one more 
under the moral restraints, even of that lawless age, than 
the freebooter Jephthah, nor in any other part of the 
Holy Land than that separated by the Jordan valley 
from the more regular institutions of the country. Moab 



4§ 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



and Amnion, the neighbouring tribes to Jephthah's native 
country, were the parts of Palestine where human sacrifice 
lingered longest. It was the first thought of Balak in 
the extremity of his terror (Micah vi. 7) ; it was the last 
expedient of Balak' s successor in the war with Jehosha- 
phat (2 Kings iii. 27). Moloch, to whom even before 
they entered Palestine the Israelites had offered human 
sacrifices (Ezek. xx. 26), and who is always spoken of 
as the deity who was thus honoured, was especially the 
God of Amnion. It is but natural that a desperate 
soldier like Jephthah, breathing the same atmosphere, 
physical and social, should make the same vow, and, 
having made it, adhere to it. There was 110 High Priest 
or Prophet at hand to rebuke it. They were far away in 
the hostile tribe of Ephraim. He did what was right in 
his own eyes, and as such the transaction is described. 
Mostly it is but an inadequate account to give of these 
doubtful acts, to say that they are mentioned in the 
sacred narrative without commendation. Often where no 
commendation is expressly given, it is distinctly implied. 
But here the story itself trembles with the mixed feeling 
of the action. The description of Jephthah's wild cha- 
racter prepares us for some dark catastrophe. The 
admiration for his heroism and that of his daughter 
struggles for mastery in the historian with indignation at 
the dreadful deed. He is overwhelmed by the natural 



JEPHTHAH. 



49 



grief of a father. " Oh ! oh ! my daughter, thou hast 
crushed me, thou hast crushed me ! " She rises at once 
to the grandeur of her situation as the instrument whereby 
the victory had been won. If the fatal word had escaped 
his lips, she was content to die, "forasmuch as the Lord 
hath taken vengeance of thee upon thine enemies, even 
the children of Amnion." It is one of the points ot 
Sacred History, where the likeness of classical times 
mingles with the Hebrew devotion. It recalls to us 
the story of Idomeneus and his son, of Agamemnon and 
Iphigenia. And still more closely do we draw near, as 
our attention is fixed on the Jewish maiden, to a yet 
more pathetic scene. Her grief is the exact anticipation 
of the lament of Antigone, sharpened by the peculiar 
horror of the Hebrew women at a childless death- 
descending with no bridal festivity, with no nuptial 
torches, to the dark chambers of the grave. Into the 
mountains of Gilead she retires for two months— plung- 
ing deeper and deeper into the gorges of the mountains, 
to. bewail her lot, with the maidens who had come out 
with her to greet the returning conqueror. Then comes 
the awful end, from which the sacred writer, as it were, 
averts his eyes. " He did with her according to his vow ? " 
In her the house of Jephthah became extinct. But for 
years afterwards, even to the verge of the monarchy, the 
dark deed was commemorated. Four days in every year 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



the maidens of Israel went up into the mountains of 
Gilead — and here the Hebrew language lends itself to 
the ambiguous feeling of the narrative itself, " to praise," 
or " to lament " " the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite." 

The deep pathos of the original story, and the lesson 
which it reads of the heroism of the father and daughter, 
is to be admired and loved in the midst of the fierce 
superstitions across which it plays, like a sunbeam on a 
stormy sea. So regarded, it may still be remembered with 
a sympathy at least as great as is given to the heathen 
immolations, just cited, which awaken a sentiment of 
compassion wherever they are known. The sacrifice of 
Jephthah's daughter, taking it at its worst, was not a 
human sacrifice in the gross sense of the word — not a 
slaughter of an unwilling victim, as when the Gaul and 
Greek were buried alive in the Roman Forum ; but the 
willing offering of a devoted heart, to free, as she sup- 
posed, her father and her country from a terrible obliga- 
tion. It was, indeed, as Josephus says, an act in itself 
hateful to God. But, nevertheless, it contained just that 
one redeeming feature of pure obedience and love, which 
is the distinguishing mark of all true Sacrifice, and which 
communicates to the whole story those elements of ten- 
derness and nobleness well drawn out of it by two modern 
poets, to each of whom, in their different ways, may be 
applied what was said by Goethe of the first — that at 



JEPHTHAH. 



least one function committed to him was that of giving 

life and form to the incidents and characters of the Old 

Testament : — 

" Though the virgins of Salem lament, 
Be the judge and the hero unbent ; 
I have won the great battle for thee, 
And my father and country are free. 

When this blood of thy giving has gush'd, 
When the voice that thou lovest is hush'd ; 
Let my memory still be thy pride, 
And forget not I smiled as I died." 

Byron's Hebrew Melodies. 

Or, in the still more exact language of the more recent 

poet — Tennyson : — 

" The daughter of the warrior Gileadite, 

A maiden pure ; as when she went along 
From Mizpeh's tower' d gate with radiance light, 
With timbrel and with song. 
* * * * * 

4 My God, my land, my father — these did move 
Me from my bliss of life, that Nature gave, 
Lower'd softly with a threefold cord of love, 
Down to a silent grave. 

■ And I went mourning, " No fair Hebrew boy 
Shall smile away my maiden blame among 
The Hebrew mothers " — emptied of all joy, 
Leaving the dance and song. 

' Leaving the olive-gardens far below, 

Leaving the promise of my bridal bower, 

The valleys of grape-loaded vines that glow 

Beneath the battled tower.' 
♦ * * * « * 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



* When the next moon was roll'd into the sky, 

Strength came to me that equall'd my desire. 
How beautiful a thing it was to die 
For God and for my sire ! 

* It comforts me in this one thought to dwell, 

That I subdued me to my father's will ; 
Because the kiss he gave me, ere I fell, 
Sweetens the spirit still. 
* * * * * * 

' Moreover it is written that my race 

Hew'd Ammon, hip and thigh, from Aroer 
On Arnon unto Minnith !' " 

Jewish Church, i. 



SAMSON. 



T7R0M the lawlessness of Jephthah on the extreme 
eastern frontier of Palestine, we pass at once to a 

manifestation of the same tendency in a different, but not 

less incontestable form, on the extreme western frontier. 

At the same time the new enemies, in whose grasp we 

now find the Israelites, remind us that we are approaching 

a new epoch in their history. 

" The Philistines " now present themselves to our notice, 

if not absolutely for the first time, yet for the first time as 
a powerful and hostile nation. In the original conquest 
by Joshua they are hardly mentioned. Their name appears 
to indicate their late arrival— " the strangers;" and the 
scattered indications of their origin lead to the conclusion 
that they were settlers from some foreign country. Un- 
like the rest of the inhabitants of Canaan, they were 



54 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



uncircumcised, and appear to have stood on a lower level 
of civilization. They were almost, it may be said, the 
laughing-stock of their livelier and quicker neighbours, 
from their dull, heavy stupidity; the easy prey of the 
rough humour of Samson, or the agility and cunning of 
the diminutive David. 

Possibly the Philistines may have been called in by 
the older Avites, as allies against the invading Israelites, 
and then, as in the ancient fable, made themselves their 
masters. Be that as it may, the Philistines were the 
longest, and deadliest enemies of the Chosen People, 
whose hostilities, commencing in the close of the period 
of the Judges, lasted through the two first reigns of the 
monarchy, and were not finally extinguished till the time 
of Hezekiah. 

Of all the tribes of Israel, that on which these new 
comers pressed most heavily, was the small tribe of Dan, 
already straitened between the mountains and the sea, 
and communicating with its seaport, Joppa, only by 
passing through the Philistine territory. Out of this tribe, 
accordingly, the deliverer came. It was in Zorah, planted 
on a high conical hill overlooking the plain, which, from 
its peculiar relation to these hills, was called " the root 
of Dan," that the birth of the child took place, who was 
by a double tie connected with the history of this peculiar 
period, as the first conqueror of the Philistines, and as the 



SAMSON. 



55 



first recorded instance of a Nazarite. In both respects 
he was the beginner of that work which a far greater than 
he, the Prophet Samuel, carried to a completion. But 
what in Samuel were but subordinate functions, in Samson 
were supreme, and in him were further united with an 
eccentricity of character and career that gives him his 
singular position amongst the Israelite heroes. 

This was the age of vows, and it is implied in the 
account that such special vows as that which marked the 
life of Samson were common. The order of Nazarites, 
which we find described in the code of the Mosaic law, 
was already in existence. It was the nearest approach to 
a monastic institution that the Jewish Church contained. 
It was, as its name implies, a separation from the rest of 
the nation, partly by the abstinence from all intoxicating 
drink, partly by the retention of the savage covering of 
long flowing tresses of hair. The order thus begun con- 
tinued till the latest times. It was as the first fruits of 
this institution, no less than as his country's champion, 
that the birth of Samson is ushered in with a solemnity 
of inauguration which, whether we adopt the more coarse 
and literal representation of Josephus, or the more 
shadowy and refined representation of the Sacred nar- 
rative, seems to announce the coming of a greater event 
than that which is comprised in the merely warlike career 
of the conqueror of the Philistines. 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



Wherever the son of Manoah appeared in later life, 
he was always known by the Nazarite mark. The early 
vow of his mother was always testified by his shaggy, 
untonsured head, and by the seven sweeping locks, 
twisted together yet distinct, which hung over his 
shoulders ; and in all his wild wanderings and excesses 
amidst the vineyards of Sorek and Timnath, he is never 
reported to have touched the juice of one of their abun- 
dant grapes. 

But these were his only indications of an austere life. 
It is one of the many distinctions between the manners of 
the East and West, between ancient and modern forms of 
religious feeling, that the Jewish chief, whose position 
most nearly resembles that of the founder of a monastic 
order, should be the most frolicsome, irregular, unculti- 
vated creature that the nation ever produced. Not only 
was celibacy no part of his Nazarite obligations, but not 
even ordinary purity of life. He was full of the spirits 
and the pranks, no less than of the strength, of a giant. 
His name, which Josephus interprets in the sense of 
"strong," was still more characteristic. He was the 
"Sunny," — the bright and beaming, though wayward 
likeness of the great luminary which the Hebrews de- 
lighted to compare to a "giant rejoicing to run his 
course," " a bridegroom coming forth out of his chamber." 
Nothing can disturb his radiant good humour. His most 



SAMSON. 



57 



valiant, his most cruel actions, are done with a smile on 
his face, and a jest in his mouth. It relieves his character 
from the sternness of Phoenician fanaticism. As a peal 
of hearty laughter breaks in upon the despondency of 
individual sorrow, so the joviality of Samson becomes 
a pledge of the revival of the greatness of his nation. It 
is brought out in the strongest contrast with the brute 
coarseness and stupidity of his Philistine enemies, here, as 
throughout the sacred history, the butt of Israelitish wit 
and Israelitish craft. 

Look at his successive acts in this light, and they 
assume a fresh significance. Out of his first achievement 
he draws the materials for his playful riddle. His second 
and third achievements are practical jests on the largest 
scale. The mischievousness of the conflagration of the 
cornfields, by means of the jackals, is subordinate to 
the ludicrous aspect of the adventure, as, from the hill of 
Zorah, the contriver of the scheme watched the streams 
of fire spreading through cornfields and orchards in the 
plain below. The whole point of the massacre of the 
thousand Philistines lies in the cleverness with which 
their clumsy triumph is suddenly turned into discom- 
fiture, and their discomfiture is celebrated by the punning 
turn of the hero, not forgotten even in the exaltation or 
the weariness of victory : " With the jawbone of an ass 
have I slain one mass, two masses ; with the jawbone of 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



an ass I have slain an aarload of men." The carrying off 
the gates of Gaza derives all its force from the neatness 
with which the Philistine watchmen are outdone, on the 
very spot where they thought themselves secure. The 
answers with which he puts off the inquisitiveness of 
Delilah derive their vivacity from the quaintness of the 
devices which he suggests, and the ease with which his 
foolish enemies fall into trap after trap, as if only to give 
their conqueror amusement. The closing scenes of his 
life breathe throughout the same terrible, yet grotesque, 
irony. When the captive warrior is called forth, in the 
merriment of his persecutors, to exercise for the last time 
the well-known raillery of his character, he appears as 
the great jester or buffoon of the nation; the word em- 
ployed expresses alike the roars of laughter, and the wild 
gambols by which he " made them sport ; " and as he 
puts forth the last energy of his vengeance, the final 
effort of his expiring strength, it is in a stroke of broad 
and savage humour that his indignant spirit passes away. 
"O Lord Jehovah, remember me now; and strengthen 
me now, only this once, O God, that I may be avenged 
of the Philistines " [not for both of my lost eyes, but] 
" for one of my two eyes." That grim playfulness, strong 
in death, lends its paradox even to the act of destruction 
itself, and overflows into the touch of triumphant satire, 
with which the pleased historian closes his story : " The 



SAMSON. 



59 



dead which he slew at his death were more than they 
which he slew in his life." 

There is no portion of the sacred narrative more 
stamped with a peculiar local colour than the account of 
Samson. Unlike the heroes of Grecian, Celtic, or Teu- 
tonic romance, whose deeds are scattered over the whole 
country, or the whole continent where they lived— Her- 
cules, or Arthur, or Charlemagne— the deeds of Samson 
are confined to that little corner of Palestine in which 
was pent up the fragment of the tribe to which he 
belonged. He is the one champion of Dan. To him, 
if to any one, must be the reference in the blessing of 
Jacob j " Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes 
of Israel." In his biting wit and cunning ambuscades, 
which baffled the horses and chariots of Philistia, may 
probably be seen "the serpent by the way, the adder in 
the path, that biteth the horses heels, so that his rider 

shall fall backwards." 

The scene of his death is the great Temple of the 
Fish-God at Gaza, in the extremity of the Philistine dis- 
trict. But his grave was in the same spot which had 
nourished his first youthful hopes. From the time of 
Gideon downwards, the tombs of the judges have been 
carefully specified. In no case, however, does the speci- 
fication suggest a more pathetic image than in the descrip- 
tion of the funeral procession, in which the dead hero is 



6o 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



borne by his brothers and his kinsmen " up " the steep 
ascent to his native hills, and laid, as it would seem, 
beside the father who had watched with pride his early 
deeds, " between Zorah and Eshtaol, in the burial place 
of Manoah his father. 

JeTuish Church, i. 362. 



SAMUEL. 



DIFFERENT derivations have been given of the 
name of Samuel-" Name of God," "placed by 
God," " asked of God." Josephus makes it correspond 
to the well-known Greek name Theaetetus, "heard of 
God." This, which may have the same meaning as the 
previous derivation, is the most obvious. He was the last 
Judge, the first of the regular succession of Prophets, and 
the founder of the monarchy. So important a position 
did Samuel hold in Jewish history as to have given his 
name to the sacred book, now divided into two, which 
covers the whole period of the first establishment of the 
kingdom, corresponding to the manner in which the 
name of Moses has been assigned to the sacred book, 
now divided into five, which covers the period of the 
foundation of the Jewish Church itself. In fact, no cha- 



62 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



racter of equal magnitude had arisen since the death of 
the great Lawgiver. 

He was the son of Elkanah, an Ephrathite or Ephrai- 
mite, and Hannah or Anna. His father is one of the few 
private citizens in whose household we find polygamy. 
It may possibly have arisen from the irregularity of the 
period. All that appears with certainty of his birth- 
place is that it was in the hills of Ephraim. At the foot 
of the hill was a well (i Sam. xix. 22). On the brow of its 
two summits was the city. It never lost its hold on 
Samuel, who in later life made it his fixed abode. 

It is on the mother of Samuel that our chief attention 
is fixed in the account of his birth. She is described as a 
woman of a high religious mission. Almost a Nazarite by 
practice (1 Sam. i. 15), and a prophetess in her gifts (1 Sam. 
ii. 1), she sought from God the gift of a child for which 
she longed with the passionate devotion of silent prayer, 
of which there is no other example in the Old Testament, 
and when the son was granted, the name which he bore, 
and thus first introduced into the world, expressed her sense 
of the agency of her entreaty — Samuel — " the asked or 
Heard of God." 

Living in the great age of vows, she had before his 
birth dedicated him to the office of a Nazarite. As 
soon as he was weaned, she herself with her husband 
brought him to the Tabernacle of Shiloh, where she had re- 



SAMUEL. 



63 



ceived the first intimation of his birth, and there solemnly 
consecrated him. Then his mother made him over to Eli 

(1 Sam. i. 25, 28) From this time the child is 

shut up in the Tabernacle. The priests furnished him with 
a sacred garment, an ephod, made, like their own, of white 
linen, though of inferior quality, and his mother every year, 
apparently, at the only time of their meeting, gave him a 
little mantle reaching down to his feet, such as was worn 
only by high personages, or women, over the other dress, 
and such as he retained, as his badge, till the latest times 
of his life. He seems to have slept within the holiest 
place (1 Sam. iii. 3), and his special duty was to put out, 
as it would seem, the sacred candlestick, and to open the 
doors at sunrise. 

In this way his childhood was passed. It was whilst 
thus sleeping in the Tabernacle that he received his 
first prophetic call. The stillness of the night— the 
sudden voice— the childlike misconception— the vener- 
able Eli— the contrast between the terrible doom and 
the gentle creature who was to announce it— give to 
this portion of the narrative a universal interest. It 
is this side of Samuel's career that has been so well 
caught in the well-known picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

From this moment the prophetic character of Samuel 
was established. His words were treasured up, and 
Shiloh became the resort of those who came to hear him 



64 SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



(i Sam. iii. 19-21). In the overthrow of the sanctuary 
which followed shortly on this vision, we hear not what 
became of Samuel. He next appears, probably twenty 
years afterwards, suddenly amongst the people, warning 
them against their idolatrous practices. He convened 
an assembly at Mizpeh, and there with a symbolical rite, 
expressive partly of deep humiliation, partly of the liba- 
tions of a treaty, they poured water on the ground, they 
fasted, and they entreated Samuel to raise the piercing 
cry, for which he was known, in supplication to God for 
them. It was at the moment he was offering up a 
sacrifice, and sustaining this loud cry, that the Philistines' 
host suddenly burst upon them. A violent thunder- 
storm, and (according to Josephus) an earthquake came 
to the timely assistance of Israel. The Philistines fled, 
and exactly at the spot where twenty years before they 
had obtained their great victory, they were totally routed. 
A stone was set up, which long remained as a memorial 
of Samuel's triumph, and gave to the place its name of 
Eben-ezer, " the Stone of Help," which has thence passed 
into Christian phraseology, and become a common name of 
nonconformist chapels (1 Sam. vii. 12). The old Canaan- 
ites, whom the Philistines had dispossessed in the outskirts 
of the Judsean hills, seemed to have helped in the battle, 
and a large portion of territory was recovered (1 Sam. vi. 
14). This was Samuel's first, and as far as we know, his 



SAMUEL. 



only military achievement. But as in the case of the 
earlier chiefs who bore that name, it was apparently this 
which raised him to the office of " Judge." He visited in 
discharge of his duties as ruler, the three chief sanctuaries 
on the west of Jordan, Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpeh (i Sam. 
vii. 1 6). His own residence was still his native city, 
Ramah, which he further consecrated by an altar. Here 
he married, and two sons grew up to repeat under his 
eyes the same perversion of high office that he had him- 
self witnessed in his childhood, in the case of the two 
sons of Eli. One was Abiah, the other Joel. In his 
old age, according to the quasi-hereditary principle, 
already adopted by previous Judges, he shared his power 
with them, and they exercised their functions at the 
southern frontier in Beersheba. 

Down to this point in Samuel's life, there is but little to 
distinguish his career from that of his predecessors. Like 
many characters in later days, had he died in youth his 
fame would hardly have been greater than that of Gideon 
or Samson. He was a judge, a Nazarite, a warrior, and 
(to a certain point) a prophet. 

' But his peculiar position in the sacred narrative turns 
on the events which follow. He is the inaugurator of 
the transition from what is commonly called the theo- 
cracy to the monarchy. The misdemeanour of his own 
sons, in receiving bribes, and in extorting exorbitant 



66 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



interest on loans (i Sam. viii. 3, 4), precipitated the catas- 
trophe which had been long preparing. The people 
demanded a king. Josephus describes the shock to 
Samuel's mind, " because of his inborn sense of justice, 
because of his hatred of kings, as so far inferior to 
the aristocratic form of government, which conferred a 
godlike character on those who lived under it." For 
the whole night he lay fasting and sleepless, in the per- 
plexity of doubt and difficulty. In the vision of that 
night, as recorded by the sacred historian, is given the 
dark side of the new institution, on which Samuel dwells 
on the following day (1 Sam. viii. 9-18). This presents 
his reluctance to receive the new order of things. The 
whole narrative of the reception and consecration of 
Saul, gives his acquiescence in it. 

The final conflict of feeling and surrender of his office 
is given in the last assembly over which he presided, and 
in his subsequent relations with Saul. The assembly 
was held at Gilgal, immediately after the victory over 
the Ammonites. The monarchy was a second time 
solemnly inaugurated. "All the men of Israel rejoiced 
greatly." Then takes place Samuel's farewell address. 
By this time the long flowing locks on which no razor 
had ever passed were white with age (1 Sam. xii. 2). He 
appeals to their knowledge of his integrity. Whatever 
might be the lawless habits of the chiefs of those times— 



SAMUEL. 



67 



Hophni, Phinehas, or his own sons — he had kept aloof 
from all. No ox or ass had he taken from their stalls — no 
bribe to obtain his judgment — not even a sandal. It is 
this appeal, and the response of the people, that has 
made Grotius call him the Jewish Aristides. He then 
sums up the new situation in which they have placed 
themselves ; and, although " the wickedness of asking a 
king," is still strongly insisted on, and the unusual portent 
of a thunderstorm in May or June, in answer to Samuel's 
prayer, is urged as a sign of Divine displeasure, (1 Sam. xii., 
16-19), the general tone of the condemnation is much 
softened from that which was pronounced on the first 
intimation of the change. The first king is repeatedly 
acknowledged as " the Messiah," or, " anointed of the 
Lord," the future prosperity of the nation is declared to 
depend on their use or mis-use of the new constitution, 
and Samuel retires with expressions of goodwill and 
hope : — " I will teach you the good and the right way, 
. . . only fear the Lord." 

It is the most signal example afforded in the Old 
Testament, of a great character reconciling himself to a 
changed order of things, and of the Divine sanction 
resting on his acquiescence. 

His subsequent relations with Saul are of the same 
mixed kind. The two institutions which they respec- 
tively represented ran on side by side. Samuel was still 

f 2 



68 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



Judge. He judged "Israel all the days of his life" (i Sam. 
vii. 15), and from time to time came across the king's 
path. But these interventions were chiefly in another 
capacity, which this is the place to unfold. 

Samuel is called emphatically "The Prophet" (Acts 
iii. 24 ; xiii. 20). To a certain extent this was in conse- 
quence of the gift which he shared in common with others 
of his time. He was especially known in his own age as 
"Samuel the Seer" (1 Chro. ix. 22; xxvi. 28). "I am 
the Seer," was his answer to those who asked " where 
is the Seer?" "Where is the Seer's house?" (1 Sam. 
ix. 1 1). " Seer/' the ancient name, was not yet superseded 
by " prophet." Of the three modes by which Divine 
communications were then made, " by dreams, Urim and 
Thummim, and prophets," the first was that by which 
the Divine will was made known to Samuel (1 Sam. iii. 
1-2). " The Lord uncovered his ear " to whisper into it 
in the stillness of the night the messages that were to be 
delivered. It is the first distinct intimation of the idea of 
" Revelation" to a human being. He was consulted far 
and near on the small affairs of life ; loaves of " bread," or 
" the fourth part of a shekel of silver," were paid for the 
answers (1 Sam. ix. 7, 8). From this faculty, combined 
with his office of ruler, an awful reverence grew up round 
him. No sacrificial feast was thought complete without 
his blessing. When he appeared suddenly elsewhere 



SAMUEL. 



6g 



for the same purpose, the villagers "trembled" at his 
approach (i Sam. xvi. 4, 5>- A peculiar virtue was be- 
lieved to reside in his intercession. He was conspicuous 
in later times amongst those that « call upon the name 
of the Lord" (Ps. xcix. 6), and was placed with Moses as 
"standing" for prayer, in a special sense, "before the 
Lord" (Jer. xv. 1). It was the last consolation he left 
in his parting address, that he would " pray to the Lord " 
for the people. There was something peculiar m the 
long sustained cry or shout of supplication, which seemed 
to draw down as by force the divine answer (r Sam. 
vii 8 9). All night long, in agitated moments, "he 
cried unto the Lord" (1 Sam. xv. n). But there 
are two other points which more especially placed him 
at the head of the prophetic order as it afterwards ap- 
peared The first is brought out in his relation with Saul, 
the second in his relation with David. He represents 
the independence of the moral law, of the Divine Will, 
as distinct from regal or sacerdotal enactments, which is 
so remarkable a characteristic of all the later prophets. 
He certainly was not a priest; and all the attempts to 
identify his opposition to Saul with a hierarchical interest 
are founded on a complete misconception of the facts of 
the case. Prom the time of the overthrow of Shiloh, he 
never appears in the remotest connexion with the priestly 
order. Amongst all the places included in his personal or 



7o 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



administrative visits, neither Shiloh, nor Nob, nor Gibeon, 
the seats of the sacerdotal caste, are ever mentioned. When 
he counsels Saul, it is not as the priest but as the prophet; 
when he sacrifices or blesses the sacrifices, it is not as the 
priest, but either as an individual Israelite of eminence, or 
as a ruler, like Saul himself. Saul's sin in both cases where 
he came into collision with Samuel, was not of intruding 
into sacerdotal functions, but of disobedience to the pro- 
phetic voice. The first was that of not waiting for 
Samuel's arrival, according to the sign given by Samuel 
as his original meeting at Ramah (i Sam. x. 8 ; xiii. 8) ; 
the second was that of not carrying out the stern pro- 
phetical injunction for the destruction of the Amalekites. 
When, on that occasion, the aged prophet called the 
captive prince before him, and with his own hands hacked 
him limb from limb, in retribution for the desolation he 
had brought into the homes of Israel, and thus offered 
up his mangled remains almost as a human sacrifice, 
(" before the Lord in Gilgal "), we see the representa- 
tive of the older part of the Jewish history. But it is the 
true prophetic utterance, such as breathes through the 
psalmists and prophets, when he says to Saul in words 
which, from their poetical form, must have become fixed 
in the national memory, " To obey is better than sacrifice, 
and to hearken than the fat of rams." 

The parting was not one of rivals, but of dear though 



SAMUEL. 



71 



divided friends. The king throws himself on the prophet 
with all his force; not without a vehement effort the 
prophet tears himself away. The long mantle by which 
he was always known is rent in the struggle ; and, like 
Ahijah after him, Samuel was in this the omen of the 
coming rent in the monarchy. They parted, each to his 
house, to meet no more. But a long shadow of grief fell 
over the prophet. " Samuel mourned for Saul." " It 
grieved Samuel for Saul." " How long wilt thou mourn 
for Saul?" (1 Sam. xv. n, 35i xvi -> 

The next point is that he is the first of a regular suc- 
cession of Prophets. " All the Prophets from Samuel and 
those that follow after." (Acts iii. 24) The con- 
nexion of the continuity of the office with Samuel appears 
to be direct. It is in his life-time, long after he had been 
" established as a prophet," that we hear of the companies 
of disciples, called in the Old Testament " the sons of 
the prophets." 

All the peculiarities of their education are implied or 
expressed— the sacred dance, the sacred music, the 
solemn procession (1 Sam. x. 5, 10 ; 1 Chro. xxv. 1, 6). 
At the head of this congregation, or " church as it were, 
within a church," Samuel is expressly described as " stand- 
ing appointed over them." Their chief residence at this 
time, was at Samuel's own abode, Ramah, where they 
lived in habitations apparently of a rustic kind, like the 



72 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



leafy huts which Elisha's disciples afterwards occupied 
by the Jordan. 

In those schools, and learning to cultivate the pro- 
phetic gifts, were some, whom we know for certain, 
others whom we may almost certainly conjecture, to 
have been so trained or influenced. One was Saul. 
Twice at least he is described as having been in the 
company of Samuel's disciples, and as having caught 
from them the prophetic fervour, to such a degree as to 
have " prophesied among them" (i Sam. x. 10, n), and 
on one occasion, to have thrown off his clothes, and to 
have passed the night in a state of prophetic trance 
(i Sam. xix. 24) : and even in his palace, the prophesying 
mingled with his madness on ordinary occasions (1 Sam. 
xviii. 9). Another was David. The first acquaintance 
of Samuel with David was when he privately anointed 
him at the house of Jesse. But the connexion thus 
begun with the shepherd boy must have been continued 
afterwards. David, at first, fled to " Naioth in Ramah," 
as to his second home, and the gifts of music, of song, 
and of prophecy, here developed on so large a scale, 
were exactly such as we find in the notices of those who 
looked up to Samuel as their father. It is, further, hardly 
possible to escape the conclusion that David there first 
met his fast friends and companions in after life, pro- 
phets like himself— Gad and Nathan, 



SAMUEL. 



75 



It is needless to enlarge on the importance with which 
these incidents invest the appearance of Samuel. He 
there becomes the spiritual father of the psalmist king. 
He is also the founder of the first regular institutions of 
religious instruction, and communities for the purpose of 
education. The schools of Greece were not yet in exist- 
ence. From these Jewish institutions were developed, 
by a natural order, the universities of Christendom; and 
it may be further added, that with this view the whole 
life of Samuel is in accordance. He is the prophet— the 
only prophet till the time of Isaiah— of whom we know 
that he was so from his earliest years. It is this con- 
tinuity of his own life and character, that makes him so 
fit an instrument for conducting his nation through so 
' great a change. The death of Samuel is described as 
taking place in the year of the close of David's wander- 
ings. It is said with peculiar emphasis, as if to mark the 
loss, that " all the Israelites," all— with a universality 
never specified before— " were gathered together," from 
all parts of this hitherto divided country, and " lamented 
him " and " buried him," not in any consecrated place, but 
within his own house, thus in a manner consecrated by 
being turned into his tomb (i Sam. xxv. i). His relics 
were translated "from Judea" (the place is not specified) 
A.D. 406, to Constantinople, and received there with 
much pomp by the Emperor Arcadius. They were landed 



74 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



at the pier of Cbalcedon, and thence conveyed to a church, 
near the palace of Hebdomon. 

The situation of Ramathaim is uncertain. But the place 
long pointed out as his tomb, is the height, most conspi- 
cuous of all in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, imme- 
diately above the town of Gibeon, known to the Crusaders 
as " Montjoye," as the spot from whence they first saw 
Jerusalem, now called Nebysamwil, " the Prophet 
Samuel." It is the only spot in Palestine which claims 
any direct connexion with the first great prophet, who 
was born within its limits ; and its commanding situation 
well agrees with the importance assigned to him in the 
sacred history. 

Bible Dictionary. 



SA UL. 

JN Saul we feel that there is a marked advance made 
in the Jewish history — from the patriarchal and 
nomadic state, which concerns us mainly by its contrast 
with our own, to that fixed and settled state which has 
more or less pervaded the whole condition of the church 
ever since. Saul was the first King of Israel, and in him 
that new and strange idea became impersonated. 

But, although in outward form Saul belonged to the 
new epoch, although even in spirit he from time to time 
threw himself into it, yet in the whole he is a product of 
the earlier condition. Whilst Samuel's existence com- 
prehends and overlaps both periods in the calmness of a 
higher elevation, the career of Saul derives its peculiar 
interest from the fact that it is the eddy in which both 
streams converge. In that vortex he struggles — the centre 



fo 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



of events and persons greater than himself; and in that 
struggle he is borne down, and lost. It is the pathetic 
interest which has more than once suggested the story of 
Saul as a subject for the modern drama. 

His character is in part illustrated by the fierce, way- 
ward, fitful nature of the tribe (Benjamin), and in part 
accounted for, by the struggle between the old and new 
systems in which he found himself involved. To this 
we must add a taint of madness, which broke out in 
violent frenzy at times, leaving him with long lucid 
intervals. His affections were strong, as appears in his 
love both for David and his son Jonathan, but they were 
unequal to the wild excesses of religious zeal or insanity 
which ultimately led to his ruin. He was, like the earlier 
Judges, remarkable for his strength and activity, and he 
was, like the Homeric heroes, of gigantic stature, taller 
by head and shoulders than the rest of the people, and 
of that kind of beauty denoted by the Hebrew word 
" good," and which caused him to be compared to the 
gazelle, "the gazelle of Israel." It was probably these 
external qualifications which led to the epithet which is 
frequently attached to his name, "chosen," "whom the 
Lord did choose," " See you him whom the Lord hath 
chosen ! " (i Sam. ix. 17 ; x. 24 : 2 Sam. xxi. 6). 

From the household of Abiel, of the tribe of Benjamin, 
two sons were born, related to each other, either as 



SAUL. 



cousins, or as uncle and nephew. The elder was Abner, 
the younger was Saul. 

It is uncertain in what precise spot of the territory of 
that fierce tribe the original seat of the family lay. It may 
have been the conical eminence amongst its central hills, 
known from its subsequent connexion with him as 
Gibeah-of-Saul. It was more probably the village of 
Zelah, on its extreme southern frontier, in which was the 
ancestral burial-place. Although the family itself was of 
small importance, Kish, the son or grandson of Abiel, 
was regarded as a powerful and wealthy chief; and it is 
in connexion with the determination to recover his lost 
property that his son Saul first appears before us. 

A drove of asses, still the cherished animal of the 
Israelite chiefs, had gone astray on the mountains. In 
search of them— by pathways of which every stage is 
mentioned, as if to mark the importance of the journey, 
but which have not yet been identified— Saul wandered 
at his father's bidding, accompanied by a trustworthy 
servant, who acted as guide and guardian of the young 
man. After a three days' circuit, they arrived at the 
foot of a hill surmounted by a town, when Saul pro- 
posed to return home, but was deterred by the advice of 
the servant, who suggested that before doing so they 
should consult "a man of God," a " seer," as to the fate 
of the asses, securing his oracle by present of a quarter 



73 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



of a silver shekel. They were instructed by the maidens at 
the well outside the city to catch the seer as he came out 
of the city to ascend to a sacred eminence, where a sacri- 
ficial feast was waiting for his benediction. At the gate 
they met the Seer, for the first time. It was Samuel. A 
divine intimation had indicated to him the approach and 
the future destiny of the youthful Benjamite. Surprised at 
his language, but still obeying his call, they ascended to 
the high place, and in the inn or caravanserai at the top 
found thirty or seventy guests assembled, amongst whom 
they took the chief seats. In anticipation of some distin- 
guished stranger, Samuel had bade the cook reserve a 
boiled shoulder, from which Saul, as the chief guest, was 
bidden to tear off the first morsel. They then descended to 
the city, and a bed was prepared for Saul on the house-top. 
At day-break Samuel roused him. They descended again 
to the skirts of the town, and there (the servant having 
left them) Samuel poured over Saul's head the consecrated 
oil, and with a kiss of salutation announced to him that 
he was to be the ruler and deliverer of the nation. From 
that moment, as he turned on Samuel the huge shoulder 
which towered above all the rest, a new life dawned upon 
him. Under the outward garb of his domestic vocation, 
the new destiny had been thrust upon him. The trivial 
forms of an antiquated phase of religion had been the 
means of introducing him to the Prophet of the Future. 



SAUL. 



79 



Each stage of his returning, as of his outgoing route, is 
marked with the utmost exactness, and at each stage 
he meets the incidents which, according to Samuel's 
prediction, were to mark his coming fortunes. By the se- 
pulchre of his mighty ancestress — known then, and known 
still, as Rachel's tomb— he met two men, who announced 
to him the recovery of the asses. There his lower cares 
were to cease. By a venerable oak— distinguished by 
the name not elsewhere given, " the oak of Tabor "—he 
met three men carrying gifts of kids and bread, and a 
skin of wine, as an offering to Bethel. There, as if to 
indicate his new dignity, two of the loaves were offered 
to him. By " the Hill of God," whatever may be meant 
thereby, possibly his own city, Gibeah, he met a band 
of prophets descending with musical instruments, and he 
caught the inspiration from them, as a sign of a grander, 
loftier life, than he had ever before conceived. 

This is what may be called the private inner view of 
his call. There was yet another outer call, which is 
related independently. An assembly was convened by 
Samuel at Mizpeh, and lots (so often practiced at that 
time) were cast to find the tribe and the family which 
was to produce the king. Saul was named— and, by a 
Divine intimation, found hid in the circle of baggage 
which surrounded the encampment. His stature at once 
conciliated the public feeling, and for the first time the 



So 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



shout was raised, afterwards so often repeated in modern 
times, " Long live the king." The monarchy, with that 
conflict of tendencies, of which the mind of Samuel was 
the best reflex, was established in the person of the 
young Prophet, whom he had thus called to his perilous 
eminence. 

Up to this point Saul had only been the shy and 
retiring youth of the family. He is employed in the 
common work of the farm. His father, when he delays 
his return, mourns for him, as having lost his way. He 
hangs on the servant for directions as to what he shall 
do, which he would not have known himself. At every 
step of Samuel's revelations he is taken by surprise. "Am 
not I a Benjamite? of t^S ^smaj^gst of the tribes of 
Israel? and my family the -best ofall the families of the 
tribe of Benjamin ? Wherefore, then, speakest thou so 
to me ? " He turns his huge shoulder on Samuel, appa- 
rently still unconscious of what awaits him. The last 
thing which those who knew him in former days can 
expect, is, that Saul should be among the prophets. 
Long afterwards the memorial of this unaptness for high 
aspirations remained enshrined in the national proverbs. 
Even after the change had come upon him, he still 
shrank from the destiny which was opening before him. 
"Tell me, I pray thee, what Samuel said unto thee. 
And Saul said unto his uncle, He told us plainly that the 



SAUL. 



o r 



asses were found. But of the matter of the kingdom, 
whereof Samuel spake, he told him not." On the day 
of his election, he was nowhere to be found, and he was 
as though he were deaf. Some there were who even after 
his appointment still said, " How shall this man save us ? " 
"and they brought him no presents." And he shrank 
back into private life, and was in his fields and with his 
yoke of oxen. 

But there was one distinction which marked out Saul 
for his future office. "The desire of all Israel" was 
already, unconsciously, " on him and on his father's house." 
He had the one gift by which in that primitive time a 
man seemed to be worthy of rule. He was "goodly," 
" there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier 
person than he," "from his shoulder and upward, he 
towered above all the people." His stately, towering 
form, standing under the pomegranate tree above the 
precipice of Migron, or on the pointed crags of Mich- 
mash, or the rocks of En-gedi, claimed for him the title 
of the " wild roe, the gazelle," perched aloft, " the pride 
and glory of Israel." Against the giant Philistines a giant 
king was needed. And " when Saul saw any strong man 
or any valiant man he took him unto him." King as he 
is, we might fancy ourselves still in the days of Shamgar 
or of Gideon, when we see him following his herd of 

G 



82 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



oxen in the field, and driving them home at the close of 
the day up the steep ascent of the city. 

It was on one of these evening returns that his career 
received the next sharp stimulus which drove him on to 
his destined work. A loud wail, such as goes up in an 
Eastern city at the tidings of some great calamity, strikes 
his ear. He said, "What aileth the people that they 
weep ? " They told him the news that had reached them 
from their kinsmen beyond the Jordan. The work 
which Jephthah had wrought in that wild region had 
to be done over again. Amnion was advancing, and 
the first victims were the inhabitants of Jabesh, connected 
by the romantic adventure of the previous generation 
with the tribe of Benjamin. This one spark of outraged 
family feeling was needed to awaken the dormant spirit 
of the sluggish giant. He was the true Benjaminite from 
first to last. " The spirit of God came upon him " as on 
Samson. His shy retiring nature vanished. His anger 
flamed out, and he took two oxen from the herd that he 
was driving, and (here again, in accordance with the like 
expedient in that earlier time, only in a somewhat gentler 
form) he hewed them in pieces and sent the bones 
through the country with the significant warning, " Whoso- 
ever cometh not after Saul, and after Samuel, so shall it 
be done unto his oxen." An awe fell upon the people ; 



SAUL. 



83 



they rose as one man. In one day they crossed the 
Jordan. Jabesh was rescued. It was the deliverance of 
his own tribe, which thus at once seated him on the 
throne securely. The east of the Jordan was regarded 
as specially the conquest of Saul. The house of Jabesh 
never forgot their debt of gratitude. 

This was his first great victory. The monarchy 
was inaugurated afresh. But he still so far resembles 
the earlier judges as to be virtually king only within his 
own tribe. 

Samuel, who had up to this time been still named as 
ruler with Saul, now withdrew, and Saul became the 
acknowledged chief. In the second year of his reign, he 
began to organise an attempt to shake off the Philistine 
yoke which pressed on his country ; not least on his own 
tribe, where a Philistine officer had long been stationed, 
even in his own field (1 Sam. x. 5 5 xiii. 3). An army 
of 3,000 was formed, which he soon afterwards gathered 
together around him ; and Jonathan, apparently with his 
sanction, rose against the officer and slew htm. This 
roused the whole force of the Philistine nation against 
him. The spirit of Israel was completely broken. Many 
concealed themselves in the caverns; many crossed the 
Jordan ; all were disarmed, except Saul and his son, with 
their immediate retainers. In this crisis, Saul, now on 
the very confines of his kingdom at Gilgal, found himself 

G 2 



84 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



in the position long before described by Samuel— longing 
to exercise his royal right of sacrifice, yet deterred by his 
sense of obedience to the prophet. At last on the 
seventh day, he could wait no longer, but just after the 
sacrifice was completed Samuel arrived, and pronounced 
the first curse, on his impetuous zeal (i Sam. xiii. 5-14). 
Meanwhile the adventurous exploit of Jonathan, at 
Michmash brought on the crisis which ultimately drove 
the Philistines back to their own territory. It was 
signalized by two remarkable incidents in the life of Saul. 
One was the first appearance of his madness in the rash 
vow which all but cost the life of his son. The other was 
the erection of his first altar, built either to celebrate the 
victory, or to expiate the savage feast of the famished 
people (1 Sam. xiv. 35). The expulsion of the Philis- 
tines (although not entirely completed) at once placed 
Saul in a position higher than that of any previous ruler 
of Israel. Probably from this time was formed the 
organization of royal state, which contained in germ some 
of the future institutions of the monarchy. The host of 
3,000 has been already mentioned. Of this Abner became 
captain. A body guard was also formed of runners and 
messengers. Of this David was afterwards made the chief. 
These two were the principal officers of the court, and 
sate with Jonathan at the king's table. Another officer 
is incidentally mentioned— the keeper of the royal mules 



SAUL. 



85 



—the "constable" of the king— such as appears in the 
later monarchy. He is the first instance of a foreigner 
employed about the court— being an Edomite, or 
Syrian, of the name of Doeg. According to Jewish 
tradition he was the servant who accompanied Saul in his 
pursuit of his father's asses— who counselled him to send 
for David— and whose son ultimately killed him. The 
high priest of the house of Ithamar (Ahimelech) was in 
attendance upon him with the ephod, when he desired it 
(i Sam. xiv. 3), and felt himself bound to assist his 
secret commissioners (ib. xxi. 1-9 ; xxii. 14). 

The King himself was distinguished by a state, not 
before marked in the rulers. He had a tall spear, of the 
same kind as that described in the hand of Goliath. 
This never left him— in repose j at his meals ; at rest ; in 
battle. In battle he wore a diadem on his head, and a 
bracelet on his arm. He sate at meals on a seat of his 
own, facing his son. He was received on his return from 
battle by the songs of the Israelite women, amongst 
whom he was on such occasions specially known as 
bringing back from the enemy scarlet robes, and golden 
ornaments for their apparel. 

The warlike character of his reign naturally still 
predominated, and he was now able (not merely, like his 
temporary predecessors, to act on the defensive, but) to 
attack the neighbouring tribes of Moab, Ammon, Edom, 



86 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



Zobah, and finally Amalek. The war with Amalek is twice 
related, first briefly in i Sam. xiv. 48, and then at length 
in xv. 1-9. Its chief connexion with Saul's history lies in 
the disobedience to the prophetical command of Samuel ; 
shown in the sparing of the King, and the retention of the 
spoil. This second act of disobedience called down the 
second curse, and the first distinct intimation of the trans- 
ference of the kingdom to a rival. The struggle between 
Samuel and Saul in their final parting is indicated by the 
rent of Samuel's robe of state, as he tears himself away 
from Saul's grasp, and by the long mourning of Samuel 
for the separation — " Samuel mourned for Saul." " How 
long wilt thou mourn for Saul ? " 

The rest of Saul's life is one long tragedy. The frenzy, 
which had given indication of itself before, now at times 
took almost entire possession of him. It is described in 
mixed phrases as " an evil spirit of God," (much as we 
might speak of "religious madness "), which, when it came 
upon him, almost choked or strangled him from its 
violence. 

In this crisis David was recommended to him by one 
of the young men of his guard (in the Jewish tradition 
groundlessly supposed to be Doeg). From this time 
forward their lives are blended together. In Saul's better 
moments he never lost the strong affection which he had 
contracted for David. " He loved him greatly." " Saul 



SAUL. 



§7 



would let him go no more home to his father's house." 
"Wherefore cometh not the son of Jesse to meat?" 
" Is this thy voice, my son David .... Return my son 
David; blessed be thou, my son David." Occasionally 
too his prophetical gift returned, blended with his mad- 
ness. He " prophesied " or " raved " in the midst of his 
house— "he prophesied and lay down naked all day and 
all night," at Raman. But his acts of fierce, wild zeal 
increased. The massacre of the priests, with all their 
families— the massacre, perhaps at the same time, of the 
Gibeonities, and the violent extirpation of the necro- 
mancers, are all of the same kind. At last the monarchy 
itself, which he had raised up, broke down under the 
weakness of its head. The Philistines re-entered the 
country, and with their chariots and horses re-occupied 
the plain of Esdraelon. Their camp was pitched on the 
southern slope of the range now called Little Hermon. 
by Shunem. On the opposite side, on Mount Gilboa, was 
the Israelite army, clinging as usual to the heights which 
were their safety. It was near the spring of Gideon's 
encampment, hence called the spring of Harod or 
" trembling," and now the name assumed an evil omen, 
and the heart of the King as he pitched his camp there 
"trembled exceedingly." In the loss of all the usual 
means of consulting the Divine will, he determined, 
with that mixture of superstition and religion which 



S3 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



marked his whole career, to apply to one of the necro- 
mancers who had escaped his persecution. She was a 
woman, living at Endor, on the other side of Little 
Hermon. According to the Hebrew tradition mentioned 
by Jerome she was the mother of Abner, and hence her 
escape from the general massacre of the necromancers. 
Volumes have been written on the question, whether in 
the scene that follows, we are to understand an imposture 
or a real apparition of Samuel. 

The obvious meaning of the narrative itself tends to 
the hypothesis of some kind of apparition. She recog- 
nizes the disguised king first by the appearance of 
Samuel, seemingly from his threatening aspect or tone 
as towards his enemy. Saul apparently saw nothing, 
but listened to her description of a god-like figure 
of an aged man, wrapped round with the royal 
or sacred robe. On hearing the denunciation, which 
the apparition conveyed, Saul fell the whole length 
of his gigantic stature on the ground, and remained 
motionless till the woman and his servants forced him 
to eat. 

The next day the battle came on, and according to Jose- 
phus, perhaps according to the spirit of the sacred narrative, 
his courage and self-devotion returned. The Israelites 
were driven up the side of Gilboa. The three sons of 
Saul were slain. Saul himself with his armour-bearer 



SAUL. 



8 9 



was pursued by the archers and the charioteers of the 
enemy. He was wounded in the stomach. His shield 
was cast away. According to one account, he fell upon 
his own sword. According to another account (which 
may be reconciled with the former by supposing that it 
describes a later incident), an Amalekite came up at the 
moment of his death-wound, (whether from himself or 
the enemy), and found him "fallen," but leaning on his 
spear. The dizziness of death was gathered over him, 
but he was still alive; and he was at his own request, 
put out of his pain by the Amelekite, who took off 
his royal diadem and bracelet, and carried the news to 
David. 

Not till then, according to Josephus, did the faithful 
armour-bearer fall on his sword and die with him. The 
body on being found by the Philistines was stripped, and 
decapitated. The armour was sent into the Philistines' 
cities, as if in retribution for the spoliation of Goliath, 
and finally deposited in the temple of Astarte, apparently 
in the neighbouring Canaanitish city of Bethshan ; and 
over the walls of the same city was hung, the naked 
headless corpse, with those of his three sons. The head 
was deposited (probably at Ashdod) in the temple of 
Dagon— 1 Chron. x. 10. The corpse was removed from 
Bethshan by the gratitude of the inhabitants of Jabesh- 
Gilead who came over the Jordan by night, carried 



go 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



off the bodies, burnt them, and buried them under 
the tamarisk at Jabesh. Thence, after the lapse of 
several years, his ashes, and those of Jonathan, were 
removed by David to their ancestral sepulchre at Zelah 
in Benjamin. 

Jewish Church, ii. 5. 



JON A THAN. 



JONATHAN was the eldest son of King Saul, the 
J name (" the gift of Jehovah," corresponding to Theo- 
doras in Greek) seems to have been common at that 
period. He first appears some time after his father's 
accession. Of his own family we know nothing, except 
the birth of one son, five years before his death (2 Sam. 
iv. 4). He was regarded in his father's life-time as heir 
to the throne. Like Saul, he was a man of great strength 
and activity, of which the exploit at Michmash was a 
proof (2 Sam. i. 23). He was also famous for the 
peculiar martial exercises in which his tribe excelled— 
archery and slinging. His bow was to him what the 
spear was to his father: "The bow of Jonathan turned 
not back." It was always about him. It is through his 
relation to David that he is chiefly known to us, probably 



9 2 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



as related by his descendants at David's Court. But 
there is a back-ground, not so clearly given, of his 
relation with his father. From the time that he first 
appears he is Saul's constant companion. He was always 
present at his father's meals. As Abner and David seem to 
have occupied the places afterwards called the captaincies 
of " the host" and " of the guard so he seems to have 
been (as Hushai afterwards) "the friend." The whole 
story implies, without expressing, the deep attachment of 
the father and son. Jonathan can only go on his dangerous 
expedition (i Sam. xiv. i), by concealing it from Saul." 
Saul's vow is confirmed, and its tragic effect deepened, 
by his feeling for his son, " though it be Jonathan my 
son." " Tell me what thou hast done." Jonathan 
cannot bear to believe his father's enmity to David, 
" my father will do nothing great or small, but that he 
will show it to me : and why should my father hide this 
thing from me ? it is not so." To him, if to any one, 
the wild frenzy of the King was amenable. — " Saul 
hearkened unto the voice of Jonathan." Their mutual 
affection was indeed interrupted by the growth of Saul's 
insanity. Twice the father would have sacrificed the 
son : once in consequence of his vow (i Sam. xiv,) The 
second time, more deliberately, on the discovery of 
David's flight : and on this last occasion, a momentary 
glimpse is given of some darker history. Were the 



JONATHAN. 



93 



phrases " son of a perverse rebellious woman," &c, mere 
frantic invectives ? or, was there something in the story of 
Ahinoam or Rispah which we do not know ? " In fierce 
anger" Jonathan left the royal presence ; but he cast his 
lot with his father's decline, not with his friend's rise, and 
" in death they were not divided." His life may be divi- 
ded into two main parts : i. The war with the Philistines ; 
commonly called, from its locality, "the war of Michmash." 
He is already of great importance in the state. Of the 
3,000 men of whom Saul's standing army was formed 
1,000 were under the command of Jonathan at Gibeah. 
The Philistines were still in the general command of the 
country; an officer was stationed at Geba, either the same 
as Jonathan's position, or close to it. In a sudden act of 
youthful daring, as when Tell rose against Gesler, or as 
in sacred history, Moses rose against the Egyptian, 
Jonathan slew this officer, and thus gave the signal for a 
general revolt. Saul took advantage of it, and the whole 
population rose, but it was a premature attempt. The 
Philistines poured in from the plain, and the tyranny 
became more deeply rooted than ever. Saul and Jonathan, 
(with their immediate attendants) alone had arms, amidst 
the general weakness and disarming of the people. They 
were encamped at Gibeah, with a small body of six 
hundred men, and as they looked down from that height 
on the misfortunes of their country, and of their native 



94 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS 



tribe especially, they wept aloud. From this oppression 
as Jonathan by his former act had been the first to pro- 
voke it, so now he was the first to deliver his people. 
On the former occasion Saul had been equally with him- 
self involved in the responsibility of the deed. Saul 
"blew the trumpet;" Saul had "smitten the officer of 
the Philistines." But now it would seem that Jonathan 
was resolved to undertake the whole risk himself. " The 
day," the day fixed by him approached, and without 
communicating his project to any one, except the young 
man, whom, like all the chiefs of that age, he retained as 
his armour-bearer, he sallied forth from Gibeah to attack 
the garrison of the Philistines stationed on the other 
side of the steep defile of Michmash. His words are 
short, but they breathe exactly the ancient and peculiar 
spirit of the Israelite warrior. " Come, and let us go 
over unto the garrison of these uncircitmcised ; it may be 
that Jehovah will work for us : for there is no restraint to 
Jehovah to save by many or by few." The answer is no 
less characteristic of the close friendship of the two 
young men : already like to that which afterwards sprang 
up between Jonathan and David. " Do all that is 
in thine heart ; . . . behold / am with thee ; as thy 
heart is my heart." After the manner of the time, 
Jonathan proposed to draw an omen for their course 
from the conduct of the enemy. If the garrison, on 



JONATHAN. 



95 



seeing them, gave intimations of descending upon them, 
they would remain in the valley : if, on the other hand, 
they raised a challenge to advance, they were to accept 
it. The latter turned out to be the case. The first 
appearance of the two warriors from behind the rocks 
was taken by the Philistines, as a furtive apparition of 
« the Hebrews coming forth out of the holes where they 
had hid themselves and they were welcomed with a 
scoffing invitation, " Come up, and we will show you a 
thing." Jonathan immediately took them at their word. 
Strong and active as he was, " strong as a lion, and swift 
as an eagle," he was fully equal to the adventure of 
climbing on his hands and feet up the face of the cliff. 
When he came directly in view of them, with his armour- 
bearer behind him, they both, after the manner of their 
tribe, discharged a flight of arrows, stones, and pebbles, 
from their bows, cross-bows, and slings, with such effect, 
that twenty men fell at the first onset. A panic seized 
the garrison, thence spread to the camp, and thence to 
the surrounding hordes of marauders; an earthquake 
combined with the terror of the moment; the confusion 
increased; the Israelites who had been taken slaves by 
the Philistines during the last three days rose in mutiny : 
the Israelites who lay hid in the numerous caverns and 
deep holes in which the rocks of the neighbourhood 
abound, sprang out of their subterranean dwellings. 



9 6 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



Saul and his little band had watched in astonishment 
the wild retreat from the heights of Gibeah— he now 
joined in the pursuit, which led him headlong after the 
fugitives, over the rugged plateau of Bethel, and down 
the path of Bethhoron to Ajalon. The father and son 
had not met on that day : Saul only conjectured his son's 
absence from not finding him when he numbered the 
people. Jonathan had not heard of the rash curse which 
Saul invoked on any one who ate before the evening. 
In the dizziness and darkness which came on after his 
desperate exertions, he put forth the staff which appa- 
rently had (with his sling and bow) been his chief weapon, 
and tasted the honey which lay on the ground as they 
passed through the forest. The pursuers in general were 
restrained even from this slight indulgence by fear of the 
royal curse; but the moment that the day, with its 
enforced fast, was over, they flew, like Moslems at sun- 
set during the fast of Ramadan, on the captured cattle ; 
and devoured them, even to the brutal neglect of the law 
which forbade the dismemberment of the fresh carcases 
with the blood. This violation of the law Saul endea- 
voured to prevent and to expiate by erecting a large stone, 
which served both as a rude table and as an altar ; the 
first altar that was raised under the monarchy. It was in 
the dead of night after this wild revel was over, that he 
proposed that the pursuit should be continued till dawn j 



JONATHAN. 



97 



and then, when the silence of the oracle of the high priest 
indicated that something had occurred to intercept the 
Divine favour, the lot was tried and Jonathan appeared 
as the culprit. Jephthah's dreadful sacrifice would have 
been repeated \ but the people interposed in behalf of 
the hero of that great day; and Jonathan was saved 
(i Sam. xiv. 24-26). 

This is the only great exploit of Jonathan's life. But 
the chief interest of his career is derived from the friend- 
ship with David, which began on the day of David's return 
from the victory over the champion of Gath, and continued 
till his death. It is the first Biblical instance of a romantic 
friendship, such as was common afterwards in Greece, and 
has been since in Christendom ; and is remarkable both 
as giving its sanction to these, and as filled with a pathos 
of its own, which has been imitated, but never surpassed, 
in modern works of fiction. " The soul of Jonathan was 
knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as 
his own soul" — " Thy love to me was wonderful, passing 
the love of women." Each found in each the affection 
that he found not in his own family : no jealousy of 
rivalry between the two, as claimants for the same throne, 
ever interposed : " Thou shalt be King in Israel, and 
I shall be next unto thee." The friendship was confirmed 
after the manner of the time, by a solemn compact 
often repeated. The first was immediately on their first 

H 



9 8 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



acquaintance. Jonathan gave David as a pledge his 
royal mantle, his sword, his girdle, and his famous bow. 
His fidelity was soon called into action by the insane 
rage of his father against David. He interceded for his 
life, at first with success. Then the madness returned 
and David fled. It was in a secret interview during this 
flight, by the stone of Ezel, that the second covenant 
was made between the two friends, of a still more bind- 
ing kind, extending to their mutual posterity — Jonathan 
laying such emphasis on this portion of the compact, as 
almost to suggest the belief of a slight misgiving on his 
part of David's future conduct in this respect. It is this 
interview which brings out the character of Jonathan in 
the liveliest colours — his little artifices — his love for both 
his father and his friend — his bitter disappointment at 
his father's unmanageable fury — his familiar sport of 
archery. With passionate embraces and tears the two 
friends parted to meet only once more, that one more 
meeting was far away in the forest of Ziph, during Saul's 
pursuit of David. Jonathan's alarm for his friend's life is 
now changed into a confidence that he will escape : " He 
strengthened his hand in God." Finally, and for the third 
time, they renewed the covenant, and then parted tor 
ever (i Sam. xxiii. 16-18). From this time forth we hear 
no more till the battle of Gilboa. In that battle he fell, 
with his two brothers and his father, and his corpse 



JONATHAN. 



99 



shared their fate. The news of his death occasioned the 
celebrated elegy of David, in which he, as the friend, 
naturally occupies the chief place, and which seems to 
have been sung in the education of the archers of Judah, 
in commemoration of the one great archer, Jonathan : 
" He bade them teach the children of Judah the use of 
the bow." 

Bible Dictionary. 



H 2 



JO AD. 

t OAB was the eldest and most remarkable of the three 
J nephews of David, the children of Zeruiah, David's 
sister. Their father is unknown. They all exhibit the 
activity and courage of David's constitutional character. 
But they never rise beyond this to the nobler qualities 
which lift him above the wild soldiers and chieftains of 
the time. Asahel, who was cut off in his youth, and 
seems to have been the darling of the family, is only 
known to us from his gazelle-like agility (2 Sam. ii. 18). 
Abishai and Joab, are alike in their implacable revenge. 
Joab, however, combines with these ruder qualities 
something of a more statesmanlike character, which 
brings him more nearly to a level with his youthful uncle ; 
and unquestionably gives him the second place in the 
whole history of David's reign. 



He first appears after David's accession to the throne 
at Hebron, thus differing from his brother Abishai, who 
was already David's companion during his wanderings. 
He with his two brothers went out from Hebron at the 
head of David's "servants," or guards, to keep a watch on 
the movements of Abner, who with a considerable force 
of Benjamites had crossed the Jordan, and come as far as 
Gibeon, perhaps on a pilgrimage to the sanctuary. The 
two parties sat opposite each other, on each side of the 
bank by that city. Abner's challenge, to which Joab 
assented, led to a desperate struggle between twelve 
champions from either side, and the whole number fell 
from the mutual wounds they received. 

This roused the blood of the rival tribes : a general 
encounter ensued : Abner and his company were de- 
feated, and in his flight, being hard pressed by the swift- 
footed Asahel, he reluctantly killed the unfortunate youth. 
The expressions which he uses, "Wherefore should I smite 
thee to the ground? How then should I hold up my face 
to Joab thy brother?" imply that up to this time there 
had been a kindly, if not a friendly, feeling between the 
two chiefs. It was rudely extinguished by this deed 
of blood. The other soldiers of Judah, when they 
came up to the dead body of their young leader, halted, 
struck dumb by grief. But his two brothers, on seeing 
the corpse, only hurried on with greater fury in the pur 



102 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



suit. At sunset the Benjamite force rallied round Abner, 
and he then made an appeal to the generosity of Joab, 
not to push the war to extremities. Joab reluctantly con- 
sented, drew off his troops, and returned to Hebron. They 
took the corpse of Asahel with them, and on the way 
halted at Bethlehem in the early morning, to inter it in 
their family burial-place. 

But Joab's revenge on Abner was only postponed. He 
had been on another of these predatory excursions from 
Hebron, when he was informed on his return that Abner 
had in his absence paid a visit to David, and been received 
into favour. He broke out into a violent remonstrance 
with the king, and then, without David's knowledge, 
immediately sent messengers after Abner, who was over- 
taken by them about two miles from Hebron. Abner, 
with the unsuspecting generosity of his noble nature, 
returned at once. Joab and Abishai met him in the gate- 
way of the town ; Joab took him aside, as if with a peaceful 
intention, and then struck him a deadly blow " under the 
fifth rib." It is possible that with the passion of vengeance 
for his brother, may have been mingled the fear lest Abner 
should supplant him in the king's favour. David burst 
into passionate invective and imprecations on Joab when 
he heard of the act, and forced him to appear in sackcloth 
and torn garments at the funeral. (2 Sam. iii. 31.) But 
it was an intimation of Joab's power which David never 



JOAB. 



IO3 



forgot. The awe in which he stood of the sons of Zeruiah 
cast a shade over the whole remainder of his life. 

There was now no rival left in the way of Joab's ad- 
vancement, and soon the opportunity occurred for his 
legitimate accession to the highest post that David could 
confer. At the seige of Jebus, the king offered the office 
of chief of the army, now grown into a " host," to any one 
who would lead the forlorn hope, and scale the precipice 
on which the besieged fortress stood. With an agility 
equal to that of David himself, or of his brother Asahel, 
Joab succeeded in the attempt, and became in conse- 
quence commander-in-chief— " Captain of the host—" the 
same office that Abner had held under Saul, the highest 
in the state after the king. His importance was imme- 
diately shown by his undertaking the fortification of the 
conquered city, in conjunction with David. 

In this post he was content, and served the king with 
undeviating fidelity. In the wide range of wars which David 
undertook, Joab was the acting general, and he there- 
fore may be considered as the founder, as far as military 
prowess was concerned, the Marlborough, the Belisarius, 
of the Jewish empire. Abishai, his brother, still accom- 
panied him as captain of the king's " mighty men." He 
had a chief armour-bearer of his own, and ten attendants 
to carry his equipment and baggage. He had the charge, 
formerly belonging to the king or judge, of giving the 



104 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



signal by trumpet for advance or retreat. He was called 
by the almost regal title of " lord," " the prince of the 
king's army." His usual residence (except when cam- 
paigning) was in Jerusalem ; but he had a house and pro- 
perty, with barley fields adjoining, in the country, near an 
ancient sanctuary, called from its nomadic village " Baal- 
hazor," where there were extensive sheep-walks. His 
great war was that against Amnion, which he conducted 
in person. 

But the services of Joab to the king were not confined 
to these military achievements. In the entangled rela- 
tions which grew up in David's domestic life, he bore an 
important part. The first occasion was the unhappy cor- 
respondence which passed between him and the king 
during the Ammonite war respecting Uriah, the Hittite, 
which led to the treacherous sacrifice of Uriah in a sortie. 
It shows both the confidence reposed by David in Joab, 
and Joab's too unscrupulous fidelity to David. From 
the possession which Joab thus acquired of the terrible 
secret of the royal household, has been dated, with 
some probability, his increased power over the mind of 
the king. 

The next occasion on which it was displayed was in 
his successful endeavour to reinstate Absalom in David's 
favour, after the murder of Amnon. It would almost 
seem as if he had been guided by the effect produced 



JOAB. 



upon the king by Nathan's parable. A similar apologue 
he put into the mouth of a "wise woman of Tekoah." 
The exclamation of David on perceiving the application 
intimates the high opinion which he entertained of his 
general, " Is not the hand of Joab in all this ? " A like 
indication is found in the confidence of Absalom that 
Joab, who had thus procured his return, would also go a 
step further and demand his admission to his father's pre- 
sence. Joab, who evidently thought that he had gained 
as much as could be expected, twice refused to visit the 
prince, but having been entrapped into an interview by 
a stratagem of Absalom, undertook the mission and suc- 
ceeded in this also. 

The same keen sense of his master's interests that had 
prompted this desire to heal the breach in the royal family 
ruled the conduct of Joab no less, when the relations of 
the father and son were reversed by the successful revolt 
of Absalom. His former intimacy with the prince did 
not impair his fidelity to the king. He followed him 
beyond the Jordan, and in the final battle of Ephraim, 
assumed the responsibility of taking the rebel prince's 
dangerous life in spite of David's injunction to spare him, 
and when no one else had courage to act so decisive 
a part. He was well aware of the terrible effect it would 
have on the king, and on this account possibly dissuaded 
his young friend Ahimaaz from bearing the news ; but 



io6 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



when the tidings had been broken, he had the spirit him- 
self to rouse David from the frantic grief which would 
have been fatal to the royal cause. His stern resolution 
(as he had himself anticipated) well nigh proved fatal to 
his own interests. The king could not forgive it, and 
went so far in his unreasonable resentment as to transfer 
the command of the army from the too faithful Joab to 
his other nephew, Amasa, the son of Abigail, who had even 
sided with the insurgents. In like manner he returned 
only a reproachful answer to the vindictive loyalty of 
Joab's brother, Abishai. Nothing brings out more strongly 
the good and bad qualities of Joab than his conduct in 
this trying crisis of his history. On the one hand, he re- 
mained still faithful to his master. On the other hand, as 
before in the case of Abner, he was determined not to 
lose the post he so highly valued. Amasa was com- 
mander-in-chief, but Joab had still his own small following 
of attendants ; and with him were the mighty men com- 
manded by his brother Abishai, and the body-guard of the 
king. With these he went out in pursuit of the remnants 
of the rebellion. In the heat of pursuit he encountered 
his rival Amasa, more leisurely engaged in the same quest. 
At " the great stone" in Gibeon, the cousins met. Joab's 
sword was attached to his girdle, by design or accident it 
protruded from its sheath : Amasa rushed into the trea- 
cherous embrace to which Joab invited him, holding fast 



JOAB. 



I07 



his sword by his own right hand, whilst the unsheathed 
sword in his left hand plunged into Amasa's stomach; 
a single blow from that practised arm, as in the case of 
Abner, sufficed to do its work. Joab and his brother 
hurried on to discharge their commission, whilst one of 
his ten attendants stayed by the corpse, calling on the 
royal party to follow after Joab. But the deed produced 
a frightful impression. The dead body was lying in a pool 
of blood by the roadside ; everyone halted as they came 
up, at the ghastly sight, till the attendant dragged it out 
of the road, and threw a cloak over it. Then, as if the 
spell was broken, they followed Joab, now once more 
captain of the host. He, too, when they overtook him, 
presented an aspect long afterwards remembered with 
horror. The blood of Amasa had spurted all over the 
girdle to which the sword was attached, and the sandals on 
his feet w T ere red with the stains left by the falling corpse. 
But, at the moment, all were absorbed in the pursuit of 
the rebels. Once more a proof was given of the wide 
spread confidence in Joab's judgment. In the besieged 
town of Abel Bethmaachah, far in the north, the same 
appeal was addressed to his sense of the evils of an endless 
civil war, that had been addressed to him years before by 
Abner, near Gibeon. He demanded only the surrender of 
the rebel chief, and on the sight of his head thrown over 
the wall, withdrew the army and returned to Jerusalem. 



ioS 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



His last remonstrance with David was on the announce- 
ment of the king's desire to number the people. " The 
king prevailed against Joab." But Joab's scruples were 
so strong that he managed to avoid numbering two of the 
tribes, Levi and Benjamin, (i Chron. xxii. 6). 

There is something mournful in the end of Joab. At 
the close of his long life, his. loyalty, so long unshaken, at 
last wavered. " Though he had not turned after Absalom, 
he turned after Adonijah." This probably filled up the 
measure of the king's long cherished resentment. We 
learn from David's last song that his powerlessness over 
his courtiers was even then present to his mind (2 Sam. 
xxiii. 6, 7), and now on his death-bed, he recalled to 
Solomon's recollection the two murders of Abner and 
Amasa, with an injunction not to let the aged soldier 
escape with impunity. 

The revival of the pretensions of Adonijah after David's 
death, was sufficient to awaken the suspicions of Solomon. 
The king deposed the high priest Abiathar, Joab's friend 
and fellow conspirator— and the news of this event at once 
alarmed Joab himself. He claimed the right of sanctuary 
within the curtains of the sacred tent, under the shelter of 
the altar at Gibeon. He was pursued by Benaiah, who 
at first hesitated to violate the sanctuary of the refuge ; 
but Solomon urged that the guilt of two such murders 
overrode all such protection. With his hands on the altar, 







SOLOMON . 



IO9 



therefore, the grey-headed warrior was slaughtered by his 
successor, the body was carried to his house "in the wil- 
derness," and there interred. He left descendants, but 
nothing is known of them. 

Bible Dictionary, 



SOLOMON. 



gOLOMON, the third King of Israel, is as unlike either 
of his predecessors as each of them is unlike the other. 
No person occupies so large a space in Sacred History, of 
whom so few personal incidents are related. That stately 
and melancholy figure — in some respects the grandest 
and the saddest in the sacred volume— is, in detail, little 
more than a mighty shadow. But on the other hand, of his 
age, of his court, of his works, we know more than of 
any other. Now, for the first time since the Exodus, 
we find distinct traces of dates — years, months, days. 
Now at last we seem to come across monuments which 
possibly remain to this day. Of the earlier ages of 
Jewish history, nothing has lasted to our time except it 
be the sepulchre, and the wells ; works of Nature rather 
than of men 



SOLOMON. 



Ill 



But the epoch is remarkable, not only for its distinct- 
ness, but for its splendour. It is characteristic indeed of 
the Jewish records that, clearly as Solomon's greatness is 
portrayed at the time, it is rarely noticed in them again. 
Of all the characters of the Sacred History, he is the 
most purely .secular; and merely secular magnificence 
was an excrescence, not a native growth, of the chosen 
people. Whilst Moses and David are often mentioned 
again in the sacred books, Solomon's name hardly occurs 
after the close of his reign. But his fame ran, as it were, 
underground amongst 'the traditions of his own people 

and of the east generally 

And, although his secular aspect has withdrawn him 
from the religious interest which attaches to many others 
of the Jewish saints and heroes, yet in this very circum- 
stance there are points of attraction indispensable to the 
development of the Sacred History. It enables us to 
study his reign more freely than is possible in the case 
of the more purely religious characters of the Bible. 
He is, in a still more exact sense than his father, " one 
of the great men of the earth " — and, as such, we can 
deal with his history, as we should with theirs. It thus 
serves as a connecting link between the common and the 
Sacred world. To have had many such characters in the 
Biblical History would have brought it down too nearly 
to the ordinary level. But to have one such is necessary 



112 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



to show that the interest which we inevitably feel in such 
events and in such men has a place in the designs of Provi- 
dence, and in the lessons of Revelation. In Solomon, 
too, we find the first beginnings of that wider view which 
ended at last in the expansion of Judaism into Christianity. 
His reign contains the first historical record of the con- 
tact between Western Europe and Eastern India. In his 
fearless encouragement of ecclesiastical architecture is 
the first sanction of the employment of art in the service 
of a true Religion. In his writings and in the literature 
which sprung from them, is the only Hebrew counterpart 
to the philosphy of Greece. For all these reasons, there 
is in him a likeness one-sided indeed, of the " Son of 
David," in whom East and West, philosphy and religion, 

were reconciled together 

The reign of Solomon has sometimes been called the 
Augustan age of the Jewish nation. But there was this 
peculiarity, that Solomon was not only its Augustus, but 
its Aristotle. With the accession of Solomon a new 
world of thought was opened to the Israelites. The 
curtain which divided them from the surrounding nations 
was suddenly rent asunder. The wonders of Egypt, the 
commerce of Tyre, the romance of Arabia, nay, it is even 
possible, the Homeric age of Greece, became visible. Of 
this the first and most obvious result, as has been hinted, 
was the growth of architecture. But the general effects on 



SOLOMON. ll 3 



Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged, 
and they feared the king "-young as he was-" for they 
saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do judgment? 
And not only in his own age, but long afterwards did the 
recollection of that serene reign keep alive the idea of 
a just king before the eyes of the people, and enable them 
to understand how there should once again appear at the 

close of their history a still greater Son of David 

Co-extensive with the all-embracing character of 
Solomon's wisdom, was its far-spreading renown and its 
variety of forms. Both alike are spoken of, the one as 
the counterpart of the other. "Thy soul covered the 

whole earth, and filled it with dark parables The 

countries marvelled at thee for thy interpretations, and 
songs, and proverbs, and parables" (Ecclus. xlvii. 17). 

Of all these manifestations of wisdom, that which 
seems to have gathered the widest fame in his own time 
was the questioning and answering, " the interpretations" 
of hard questions and riddles. The climax of the defini- 
tion of wisdom is "the understanding of a proverb, and 
the interpretation ; the words of the wise, and. their dark 
sayings." The chiefs around seem to have been stimu- 
lated by his example, or by their example to have stimu- 
lated him, to carry on this kind of Socratic dialogue 
with each other. Examples of them seem to be found 
in the Book of Proverbs, especially in the words of Agur. 



ii 4 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



" What are the six things that the Lord hateth ?" " What 
are the two daughters of the horseleach?" " What are 
the three things that are never satisfied ? — the three things 
that are too wonderful ?— the three things that disquiet 
the earth? — the four things that are little and wise? — 
the four things that are comely in going?" The historians 
of Tyre recorded that this interchange of riddles went on 
constantly between Solomon and Hiram, each being 
under the engagement to pay a forfeit of money for every 
riddle that he could not solve. Solomon got the better of 
Hiram, till Hiram set to work a Tyrian boy, the younger 
son of Abdemon, who both solved the riddles of Solomon, 
and set others which Solomon could not answer. But 
the most remarkable instance was one which has left its 
traces in both the Old and New Testament, and in the 
boundless fancies of later tradition. A chieftainess, a 
queen from some distant country, was attracted by the 
wide-spread accounts of his wisdom, to come herself in 
person to put these riddles to him. Her long train of 
camels lived in the recollection of the Israelites, as 
bringing gifts of gold, precious stones, and balsam, to her 
host. A memorial of her visit was long believed to 
remain in the balsam gardens of Jericho. Like Hiram, 
she was worsted in the unequal conflict. All her ques- 
tions were answered ; and the magnificence of the court, 
especially of the state entrance to the Temple, was such 



SOLOMON. 



that " there was no more spirit left in her." But it was 
his "wisdom " chiefly which dwelt in her mind. " Happy 
are thy wives, happy are these thy servants, who stand 

continually before thee, and hear thy wisdom." 

The combination of remote characters for a joint pur- 
pose on an unexpected scene has a natural appeal to 
the human imagination. As such, the visit of the Queen 
of Sheba has won for itself a conspicuous place in the 
New Testament. " The Queen of the South shall rise up 
in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn 
it : for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to 
hear the wisdom of Solomon." The spirit of this asking 
of questions and solving of dark riddles is of the very 
nature of true philosophy. "To ask questions rightly," 
said Lord Bacon, "is the half of knowledge." " Life 
without cross-examination is no life at all," said Socrates. 
And of this stimulating process, of this eager inquiry, of 
this solicitation of new meanings out of old words, 
Solomon is the first example. When we inquire, when 
we restlessly question, in our search after truth, when 
we seek it from unexpected quarters, we are but fol- 
lowing in the steps of the wise King of Judah, and the 

wise Queen of Sheba 

The chief manifestation, in writing, of Solomon's 
wisdom was that of Proverbs. The inward spirit of his 
philosophy consisted in questionings about the ends of 



I 2 



ii6 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



life, propounding and answering the difficulties suggested 
by human experience. Its form was either that of simi- 
litudes, or short homely maxims. 

" Proverbs," in the modern sense of that word, imply 
a popular and national reception — they imply, according 
to the celebrated definition by one of our most eminent 
statesmen, not only " one man's wit," but " many men's 
wisdom." This is, however, not the case with Solomon's 
proverbs. They are individual, not national. It is be- 
cause they represent not many men's wisdom, but one 
man's super-eminent wit, that they produced so deep an 
impression. They were gifts to the people, not the pro- 
duce of the people. "The words of the wise are as 
goads," as barbed points to urge forward to inquiry, to 
knowledge. This is one aspect. They are also " as nails 
or stakes driven " hard and home into the ground of the 
heart " by the masters of the assembly, by the shepherds 
of the people." Their pointed form is given to them to 
make them stimulate the heart and memory; they are 
driven in with all the weight of authority to give fixed- 
ness and firmness to the whole system. 

The extent of this literature was far beyond what has 
come down to us. "He spake three thousand pro- 
verbs." But ot these, a considerable number are actually 
preserved in the Book of Proverbs. The whole book 
emanates from his spirit. They abound in allusions, 



SOLOMON. 



117 



now found for the first time, and precisely applicable 
to the age of Solomon— to gold and silver and precious 
stones 1 to the duties and power of kings ; to com- 
merce. In them appears the first idea of fixed edu- 
cation and discipline, the first description of the diver- 
sities of human character. In them the instincts of the 
animal creation are first made to give lessons to men. 
Here also, as already remarked, we see the specimen of 
those riddles which delighted the age. 

The Book of Proverbs is not on a level with the 
Prophets or the Psalms. It approaches human things 
and things divine from quite another side. It has even 
something of a worldly prudential look, unlike the rest of 
the Bible. But this is the very reason why its recognition 
as a sacred book is so useful. It is the philosophy of 
practical life. It is the sign to us that the Bible does 
not despise common sense and discretion. It impresses 
upon us, in the most forcible manner, the value of intel- 
ligence and prudence, and of a good education. It deals 
too in that refined, discriminating, careful view of the finer 
shades of human character so necessary to any true estimate 
of human life. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and 
the stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy." How 
much is there, in that single sentence, of consolation, of 
love, of forethought! And, above all, it insists, over and 
over again, upon the doctrine that goodness is " wisdom," 



n 8 SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



and that wickedness and vice are "folly? There may be 
many other views of virtue and vice, of holiness and sin, 
higher and better than this. But there will be always 
some in the world who will need to remember that 
a good man is not only religious and just, but wise ; and 
that a bad man is not only wicked and sinful, but a 

miserable, contemptible fool 

The Arabian traditions relate of Solomon that in the 
staff on which he leaned, and which supported him long 
after his death, there was a worm which was secretly 
gnawing it asunder. The legend is an apt emblem of 
the dark end of Solomon's reign. As the record of his 
grandeur contains a recognition of the interest and value 
of secular magnificence and wisdom, so the record of his 
decline and fall contains the most striking witness to the 
instability of all power that is divorced from moral and 
religious principle. As Bacon is in English history 

" The wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind," 



so is Solomon in Jewish and Sacred history. 

Jewish Church, ii. 166. 



ELIJAH. 



A HAB is the first of the king's of Israel, who appears 
to have practised polygamy. But over his harem 
presided a queen who has thrown all her lesser rivals into 
the shade. For the first time the chief wife of an Israelite 
king was one of the old accursed Canaanite race. A new 
dynasty now sate on the Tyrian throne, founded by Eth- 
baaL He had, according to the Phoenician records, 
gained the crown by murder of his brother, and he united 
to the royal dignity his former office of High Priest of 
Ashtaroth. The daughter of Eth-baal was Jezebel, a 
name of dreadful import to Israelitish ears, though in 
later ages it has reappeared under the innocent form of 
Isabella. 

The marriage of Ahab with this princess was one of 
these turning points in the history of families where a 



120 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



new influence runs like poison through all its branches 
and transforms it into another being. Jezebel was a 
woman in whom, with the reckless and licentious habits 
of an oriental queen, were united the fiercest and sternest 
qualities inherent in the old Semitic race. Her husband, 
in whom generous and gentle feelings were not wanting, 
was yet of a weak and yielding character, which soon 
made him a tool in her hands. Even after his death, 
through the reigns of his sons, her presiding spirit was 
the evil genius of the dynasty. Through her daughter 
Athaliah— a daughter worthy of the mother— her influence 
extended to the rival kingdom. The wild license of her 
life and the magical fascination of her arts, or her cha- 
racter, became a proverb in the nation. Round her, and 
from her, in different degrees of nearness, is evolved the 
awful drama of the most eventful crisis of this portion of 
the Israelite history. 

The first indication of her influence was the establish- 
ment of the Phoenician worship on a grand scale in the 
court of Ahab. To some extent this was the natural 
consequence of the depravation of the public worship of 
Jehovah by Jeroboam; which seems under Omri to 
have taken a more directly idolatrous turn. But still the 
change from a symbolical worship of the One True God, 
with the innocent rites of sacrifice and prayer, to the 
cruel and licentious worship of the Phoenician divinities, 







ELIJAH. 121 



was a prodigious step downwards, and left traces in 
Northern Palestine which no subsequent reformations 
were able entirely to obliterate. Two sanctuaries were 
established; one for each of the great Phoenician deities, at 
each of the two new capitals of the kingdom. The sanc- 
tuary of Ashtaroth, with its accustomed grove, was under 
Jezebel's special sanction, at the palace of Jezreel. Four 
hundred priests or prophets ministered to it, and were sup- 
ported at her table. A still more remarkable sanctuary 
was dedicated to Baal, on the hill of Samaria. It was of 
a size sufficient to contain all the worshippers of Baal 
that the northern kingdom could furnish. Four hundred 
and fifty prophets frequented it. In the interior was a 
kind of inner fastness or adytum, in which were seated or 
raised on pillars, the figures carved in wood of the 
Phoenician deities as they were seen, in vision, centuries 
later by Jezebel's fellow-countryman, Hannibal, in the 
sanctuary of Gades. In the centre was Baal, the Sun- 
God : around him were the inferior divinities. In front of 
the temple, stood on a stone pillar the figure of Baal alone. 

As far as this point of the history, the effect of the 
heathen worship was not greater than it had been at 
Jerusalem. But there soon appeared to be a more 
energetic spirit at work than had ever come forth from 
the palace of Solomon or Rehoboam. Now arose the 
first of a long series of like events in ecclesiastical his- 



122 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



tory,— the first Great Persecution — the first persecu- 
tion on a large scale, which the Church had witnessed in 
any shape. The extermination of the Canaanites, how- 
ever bloody, and unlike the spirit of Christian times, 
had yet been in the heat of war and victory. Those who 
remained in the land were unmolested in their religious 
worship, as they were in their tenure of property and of 
office. It was reserved for the heathen Jezebel to exem- 
plify the principle of persecution in its most direct form. 
To her, and not to Moses or Joshua, the bitter intoler- 
ance of modern times must look back as its legitimate 
ancestress. 

The first beginnings of the persecution are not re- 
corded. A chasm occurs in the sacred narrative, which 
must have contained the story, only known to us through 
subsequent allusions, — how the persecutors passed 
from hill to hill, destroying the many altars which rose, 
as in the south, so in the north of Palestine, to the One 
True God — how the prophets who had hitherto held 
their own in peril were hunted down as the chief enemies 
of the new religion. Now began those hidings in caves 
and dens of the earth — the numerous caverns of the lime- 
stone rocks of Palestine — the precursors of the history of 
the Catacombs and the Covenanters. A hundred fugitives 
might have been seen, broken up into two companies, 
guided by the friendly hand of the chief minister of Ahab's 



ELIJAH. 



123 



court-the Sebastian of this Jewish Diocletian-and 
hid in spacious caverns, probably among the clefts of 
Carmel. 

It might have seemed as if, in the kingdom of Israel - 
down to this time a refuge from the idolatrous court of 
Judah-the last remnant of the true religion were to 
perish. But the blessing which had been pronounced 
on the new kingdom was still mightier than its accom- 

panying curse. 

It was at this crisis that there appeared the very chief 
of the prophets. " Alone, alone, alone,"-so thrice over 
is the word emphatically repeated-the loftiest sternest 
spirit of the True Faith raised up face to face with the 
proudest and fiercest spirit of the old Asiatic paganism, 
against Jezebel rose up Elijah the Tishbite. 

He stood alone against Jezebel. He stands alone in 
many senses among the prophets. Nursed in the bosom 
of Israel, the prophetical portion, if one may so say, of 
the chosen people, vindicating the true religion from the 
nearest danger of overthrow, setting at defiance by invisi- 
ble power the whole forces of the Israelite kingdom, he 
reached a height equal to that of Moses and Samuel, in 
the traditions of his country. He was the prophet, for 
whose return in later years his countrymen have looked 
with most eager hope. 

He appears to have given the whole order a new 



124 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



impulse, both in form and spirit, such as it had not had 
since the death of Samuel. Then they were "companies, 
bands of Prophets," now they are " sons, children of 
the Prophets ; " and Elijah first, and Elisha afterwards, 
appeared as the "Father," the "Abbot," the "Father in 
God " of the whole community. His mission was, how- 
ever, not to be the revealer of a new truth, but the 
champion of the old forgotten law. He was not so much 
a Prophetic teacher as the precursor of Prophetic teachers. 
As his likeness in the Christian era came to prepare the 
way for One greater than himself, so Elijah came to 
prepare the way for the close succession of Prophets 
who, for the next hundred years, sustained both Israel 
and Judah by hopes and promises before unknown. As 
of Luther, so of Elijah, it may be said that he was a 
Reformer, and not a Theologian. He wrote, he predicted, 
he taught, almost nothing. He is to be valued not for 
what he said, but for what he did ; not because he created, 
but because he destroyed. 

For this, his especial mission, his life and appearance 
especially qualified him. Of all the prophets he is the 
one who is most removed from modern times, from 
Christian civilization. There is a wildness, an isolation, 
a roughness about him, contrasting forcibly even with 
the mild beneficence of his immediate successor Elisha, 
still more with the bright serenity of Isaiah, and the 



ELIJAH. 



125 



plaintive tenderness of Jeremiah, but most of all with the 
patience and loving kindness of the Gospel. Round his 
picture in the Churches of Eastern Christians at the 
present day are placed by a natural association the 
decapitated heads of their enemies. Abdallah Pasha, the 
fierce lord of Acre, almost died of terror, from a vision in 
which he believed himself to have seen Elijah sitting on 
the top of Carmel. It is the likeness of his stern seclu- 
sion which is reproduced in John the Baptist, and which 
in him is always contrasted with the character of Christ. 

The other prophets— Moses, Samuel, Elisha, Isaiah, 
were constantly before the eyes of their countrymen. 
But Elijah they saw only by partial and momentary 
glimpses. He belonged to no special place. The very 
name of his birth-place is disputed. " There was no 
nation or kingdom " to which Ahab had not sent to find 
him—" but behold, they found him not." As soon as he 
was seen, "the breath of the Lord carried him away, 
whither they knew not." He was as if constantly in the 
hand of God. "As the Lord liveth, before whom I 
stand," was his habitual expression, — a slave constantly 
waiting to do his master's bidding. For an instant he 
was seen here and there at spots far apart ; sometimes in 
the ravine of the Cherith in the Jordan valley, sometimes 
in the forests of Carmel ; now on the seashore of Zidon, 
at Zarephath ; now in the wilderness of Horeb, in the 



126 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



distant south ; then far off on his way to the northern 
Damascus ; then on the top of some lonely height on 
the way to Ekron ; then snatched away " on some moun- 
tain or some valley " in the desert of Jordan. He was in 
his lifetime what he is still in the traditions of the Eastern 
Church, the Prophet of the mountains. 

Whatever might be the exact spot of his birth, he was 
of "the inhabitants of Gilead." He was the greatest 
representative of the tribes from beyond the Jordan, 
Their wild and secluded character is his no less. Wan 
dering, as we have seen, over the hills of Palestine, with 
no rest or fixed habitation — fleet as the wind, when the 
hand of the Lord was upon him, and he ran before the 
chariot of Ahab from Carmel to Jezreel — he was like the 
heroes of his own tribe of Gad, in David's life, who swam 
the Jordan in flood time, " whose face were as the faces of 
lions, and whose feet were swift as the roes upon the 
mountains like the Bedouins from the same region at 
the present day, who run with unwearied feet by the side 
of the traveller's camel, and whose strange forms are seen 
for a moment behind rock and tree, in city or field, and 
then vanish again into their native wilderness. And such 
as they are, such was he also in his outward appear- 
ance. Long shaggy hair flowed over his back ; and a 
large rough mantle of sheepskin, fastened around his 
loins by a girdle of hide, was his only covering. This 



ELIJAH. 



127 



mantle, the special token of his power, at times he would 
strip off, and roll up like a staff in his hand ; at other 
times wrap his face in it. These characteristics of the 
Arab life were dignified but not destroyed by his high 
Prophetic mission; and were clearly brought out in the 

outstanding events of his career 

The story of Elijah, like the story of Athanasius, is full 
of sudden reverses. The prophets of Baal were destroyed ; 
Ahab was cowed. But the ruling spirit of the hierarchy 
and of the kingdom remained undaunted : Jezebel was 
not dismayed. With one of those tremendous vows 
which mark the history of the Semitic race, both within 
and without the Jewish pale — the vow of Jephthah, the 
vow of Saul, the vow of Hannibal, — she sent a messenger 
to Elijah, saying, "As surely as tnou art Elijah, and I am 
Jezebel, so may God do to me, and more also, if I make 
not thy life to-morrow, about this time, as the life of one 
of them." 

The Prophet who had confronted Ahab and the 
national assembly trembled before the implacable Queen. 
It was the crisis of his life. One only out of vast multi- 
tudes remained faithful to him — the Zidonian boy of 
Zarephath, as Jewish tradition believed, the future Jonah. 
With this child as his sole companion, he left the borders 
of Israel, and entered — so far as we know for the first 
and only time — the frontier of the rival kingdom. But 



128 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



he halted not there. Only an apocryphal tradition points 
out the mark of his sleeping form, on a rock halfway 
between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. He reached the 
limit of the Holy Land. At Beersheba he left his 
attendant youth, and thence plunged into the desert. 
Under a solitary flowering broom of the desert, he lay 
down to die. "It is enough; now, O Jehovah, take 
away my life ; for / am not better than my fathers." It 
is the desponding cry of many a gallant spirit, in the day 
of disappointment and desertion. But, once and again, 
an unknown messenger, or an angelic visitant, gave him 
sustenance and comfort; and "in the strength of that 
meat he went forty days and forty nights" across the 
platform of the Sinaitic desert, till he came " to the mount 
of God, to Horeb." It is the only time, since the days 
of Moses, that the course of the Sacred History brings us 
back to these sacred solitudes. Of pilgrims, if any there 
were, to those early haunts of Israel, Elijah's name 
alone has come down to us. In "the cave," (so it is 
called, whether from its being the usual resort, or from 
the fame of this single visit),— in the cave, well-known then, 
though uncertain now, Elijah passed the night. There 
is nothing to confirm, but there is nothing to contradict, 
the belief that it may have been in that secluded basin, 
which has been long pointed out as the spot, beneath the 
summit of what is called the " Mount of Moses." One 



ELIJAH. 



129 



tall cypress stands in the centre of the little upland plain. 
A ruined chapel covers the rock on which the prophet 
is believed to have rested, on the slope of the hill. A 
well and tank, ascribed to him, are on the other side of 
the basin. The granite rocks enclose it on every side, as 
though it were a natural sanctuary. No scene could be 
more suitable for the vision which follows. It was, if 
not the first Prophetic call to Elijah, the first Prophetic 
manifestation to him of the Divine Will and the Divine 
Nature. It was a marked crisis, not only in his life, but 
in the history of the whole Prophetic Dispensation. 

He is drawn out by the warning, like that which came to 
Moses on the same spot, and stands on the mountain side, 
expecting the signs of the Divine Presence. He listened; 
and there came the sound of a rushing hurricane, which 
burst through the mountain wall and rolled down the 
granite rocks in massive fragments around him. " But 
Jehovah was not in the wind." He stood firm on his 
feet, expecting it again; and under his feet the solid 
mountain shook, with the shock of a mighty earthquake. 
61 But Jehovah was not in the earthquake." He looked 
out on the hills as they rose before him in the darkness 
of the night ; and they flamed with flashes of fire, as in 
the days of Moses. " But Jehovah was not in the fire." 
And then, in the deep stillness of the desert air — unbroken 
by falling stream, or note of bird, or tramp of beast, or 

K 



I3 SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



cry of man— came the whisper, of a voice as of a gentle 
breath— of a voice so small that it was almost like silence. 
Then he knew that the moment was come. He drew, 
as was his wont, his rough mantle over his head ; he 
wrapt his face in its ample folds ; he came out from the 
sheltering rock, and stood beneath the cave to receive 
the Divine communications. 

They blended with the vision : one cannot be under- 
stood without the other. They both alike contain the 
special message to Elijah, and the universal message to 
the Universal Church. Each is marked and explained 
by the Divine question and the human answer, twice re- 
peated : "What doest thou here, Elijah: thou, the 
Prophet of Israel, here in the deserts of Arabia?"— "I 
have been very jealous for Jehovah, the God of Hosts : 
because the chidren of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, 
thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy Prophets with 
the sword; and I, even I only, am left ; and they seek 
my life, to take it away." He thinks that the best boon 
that he can ask is that his life should be taken away. 
It is a failure, a mistake : he is not better than his 
fathers. Such is the complaint of Elijah, which carries 
with it the complaint of many a devout heart and 
gifted mind, when the world has turned against them, 
when their words and deeds have been misinterpreted, 
when they have struggled in vain against the wickedness, 



ELIJAH. 



the folly, the stupidity of mankind. But the answer to 
them is contained in the blessing on independence. It 
is the blessing on Athanasius against the world ; it is the 
encouragement to the angel Abdiel — " Amongst the 
faithless, faithful only he." Resistance to evil, even in 
the desert solitude, is a new starting-point of life. He 
has still a task before him : " Go, return on thy way to 
the wilderness of Damascus." He is to go on through 
good report and evil ; though his own heart fail him, and 
hundreds fall away. When he comes, he is to anoint 
Gentile and Hebrew, King and Prophet His work is 
not over ; it has but just begun. In the three names, 
Hazael, Jehu, Elisha, is contained the history of the 
next generation of Israel. 

But the vision reaches beyond his own immediate 
horizon. It discloses to him the true relation of a Pro- 
phet to the world and to the Church. The Queen with 
fire and sword, the splendid temples of Jezreel and 
Samaria, the whole nation gone astray after her, seemed to 
be on the one side; and the solitary Prophet, in the solitary 
wilderness, on the other side. So it seemed; but so it was 
not. The wind, the earthquake, and the fire might pass 
over him. But God was not in them. Nor was he in the 
power and grandeur of the State or Church of Israel. Deep 
down in the heart of the nation, in the caves of Carmel, 
unknown to him, unknown to each other, are seven 

K 2 



132 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



thousand, who had not, by word or deed, acknowledged 
the power of Baal. In them God was still present. In 
them was the first announcement of the doctrine, often 
repeated by later prophets, of an " Israel within Israel,"— 
of a remnant of good, which embraced the true hope of 
the future. It is the profound Evangelical truth; then 
first beginning to dawn upon the earth, that there is a 
distinction between the nation and the individual, 
between the outward divisions of sects or churches, and 
the inward divisions which run across them; good in 
the midst of evil, truth in the midst of error, internal 
invisible agreement amidst external visible dissension. 

It is further a revelation to Elijah, not only concerning 
himself and the world, but concerning God also. He 
himself had shared in the outward manifestations of 
Divine favour which appeared to mark the Old Dispen- 
sation—the fire on Carmel, the storm from the Mediter- 
ranean, the avenging sword on the banks of the Kishon. 
These signs had failed ; and he was now told that in these 
signs, in the highest sense, God was not j not in these, 
but in the still small gentle whisper of conscience, and 
solitude was the surest token that God was near to him. 
Nay, not in his own mission, grand and gigantic as it was, 
would after ages so clearly discern the Divine Inspiration, 
as in the still small voice of justice and truth that breathed 
through the writings of the later Prophets, for whom he 



ELIJAH. 



133 



only prepared the way-Hosea, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, 
Jeremiah. Not in the vengeance which through Hazael 
and Jehu was to sweep away the House of Omri, so much 
as in the discerning Love which was to spare the seven 
thousand; not in the strong east wind that parted the 
Red Sea, or the fire that swept the top of Sinai, or the 
earthquake that shook down the walls of Jericho, would 
God be brought so near to man, as in the still small 
voice of the Child at Bethlehem, as in the ministrations 
of Him whose cry was not heard in the streets, in the 
awful stillness of the Cross, in the never-failing order of 
Providence, in the silent insensible influence of the 
good deeds and good words of God and of man. Tins 
is the predictive element of Elijah's Prophecies. The 
history of the Church had made a vast stride since the 
days of Moses. Here we see, in an irresistible form, the 
true unity of the Bible. The Sacred narrative rises above 
itself to a world hidden as yet from the view of those to 
whom the vision was revealed, and by whom it was 
recorded. There is already a Gospel of Elijah. He, the 
furthest removed of all the Prophets from the Evangelical 
Spirit and character, has yet enshrined in the heart of 
his story the most forcible of protests against the hard- 
ness of Judaism— the noblest anticipation of the breadth 
and depth of Christianity. 

From this, the culminating point of Elijah's life, we 



134 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



are called abruptly to the renewal of his personal history, 
and his relations with Ahab. 

It is characteristic of the Sacred history that the final 
doom of the dynasty of Omri should be called forth, 
not by its idolatry, not by its persecution of the Pro- 
phets, but by an act of injustice to an individual, a private 
citizen. 

On the eastern slope of the hill of Jezreel, immediately 
outside the walls, was a smooth plot of ground, which 
Ahab, in his desire for the improvement of his favourite 
residence, wished to turn into a garden. But it belonged 
to Naboth, a Jezreelite of distinguished birth, who sturdily 
refused, perhaps with something of a religious scruple, 
to part with it for any price or equivalent : " Jehovah 
forbid that I should give to thee the inheritance of my 
fathers." The rights of an Israelite land-owner were not 
to be despised. The land had descended to Naboth, 
possibly, from the first partition of the tribes. Omri, the 
father of Ahab, had given a great price for the hill of 
Samaria to its owner Shemer. David would not take 
the threshing-floor on Moriah, even from the heathen 
Araunah, without a payment. The refusal brought on a 
peculiar mood of sadness, described on two occasions 
in Ahab and in no one else. But in his palace there was 
one who cared nothing for the scruples which tormented 
the conscience even of the worst of the Kings of Israel. In 



ELIJAH. *35 



the pride of her conscious superiority to the weakness of 
her husband, " Jezebel came to him and said, Dost thou 
now govern the kingdom of Israel ? Arise, and eat bread, 
and let thine heart be merry, / will give thee the vine- 
yard of Naboth the Jezreelite." It is the same contrast 
—true to nature— that we know so well in ^gisthus and 
Clytemnestra, in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, where the 
feebler resolution of the man has been urged to the last 
crime by the bold and more relentless spirit of the woman. 
She wrote the warrant in Ahab's name; she gave the 
hint to the chiefs and nobles of the city. An assembly 
was called, at the head of which Naboth, by virtue of his 
high position, was placed. There, against him, as he so 
stood, the charge of treason was brought according to 
the forms of the Jewish law. The two or three necessary 
witnesses were produced, and sate before him. The 
sentence was pronounced. The whole family were 
involved in the rain. Naboth and his sons, in the dark- 
ness of the night, were dragged out from the city. Ac- 
cording to one account, the capital was the scene; and 
in the usual place of execution at Samaria, by the side of 
the great tank or pool (here as at Hebron), Naboth and 
his sons were stoned; and the blood from their mangled 
remains ran down into the reservoir, and was licked up 
on the broad margin of stone by the ravenous dogs 
which infest an Eastern capital, and by the herds of swine 



136 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



which were not allowed to enter the Jewish city. " Then 
they sent to Jezebel saying, Naboth is stoned and is 
dead." And she repeated to Ahab all that he cared to 
hear : " Naboth is not alive, but is dead." Then the 
pang of remorse shot through his heart. " When he heard 
that Naboth was dead, he rent his clothes and put on sack- 
cloth." But this was for the first moment only. From 
the capital of Samaria, as it would seem, he rose up, and 
went down the steep descent which leads to the plain of 
Jezreel. He went in state, in his royal chariot. Behind 
him, probably in the same chariot, were two of the great 
officers of his court : Bidkar, and one whose name after- 
wards bore a dreadful sound to the house of Ahab — 
Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshi. And 
now they neared the city of Jezreel ; and now the green 
terraces appeared, which Ahab at last might call his own, 
with no obstinate owner to urge against him the claims 
of law and of property ; and there was the fatal vineyard, 
the vacant plot of ground waiting for its new possessor. 
There is a solitary figure standing on the deserted ground, 
as though the dead Naboth had risen from his bloody 
grave to warn off the King from his unlawful gains. It 
is Elijah. As in the most pathetic of Grecian dramas, 
the unjust sentence has no sooner been pronounced 
on the unfortunate Antigone, than Tiresias rises up to 
pronounce the curse on the Theban king, so, in this 



ELIJAH. 



137 



grander than any Grecian tragedy, the well-known Prophet 
is there to utter the doom of the House of Ahab. He 
comes, we know not whence. He has arisen; he has 
come down at the word of the Lord to meet the King, 
as once before, in this second crisis of his life. Few 
and short were the words which fell from these awful lips; 
and they are variously reported. But they must have 
fallen like thunderbolts on that royal company. They 
were never forgotten. Years afterwards, long after Ahab 
and Elijah had gone to their account, two of that same 
group found themselves once again on that same spot ; 
and a king, the' son of Ahab, lay dead at their feet : and 
Jehu turned to Bidkar and said, " Remember how that 
thou and I rode behind Ahab his father, when the Lord 
laid this burden upon him. Surely yesternight I saw the 
blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons, saith 
Jehovah, and I will requite thee in this plat, saith 
Jehovah." And not only on that plat, but wherever the 
house of Ahab should be found, and wherever the blood 
of Naboth had left its traces, the decree of vengeance was 
pronounced ; the horizon was darkened with the visions of 
vultures glutting on the carcasses of the dead, and the 
packs of savage dogs feeding on their remains, or lapping 
up their blood.— All these threats the youthful soldier 
heard, unconscious that he was to be their terrible exe- 
cutioner. But it was on Ahab himself that the curse fell 



138 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



with the heaviest weight. He burst at once into the 
familiar cry, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" 
The prophet and the king parted, to meet no more. 
But the king's last act was an act of penitence : on every 
anniversary of Naboth's death, he wore the Eastern signs 
of mourning. And the Prophet's words were words of 
mercy. It was as if the revelation of " the still small 
voice," was becoming clearer and clearer. For in the 
heart of Ahab there was a sense of better things, and 
that sense is recognised and blessed. 

It was three years afterwards that the first part of 
Elijah's curse, in its modified form, fell on the royal 
house. The scene is given at length, apparently to 
bring before us the gradual working-out of the catastrophe. 
The Syrian war, which forms the background of the whole 
of the history of Omri's dynasty, furnishes the occasion. 
To recover the fortress of Ramoth-Gilead is the object of 
the battle. The kings of Judah and Israel are united 
for the grand effort. The alliance is confirmed by the 
marriage of Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab, with Jehoram 
the son of Jehoshaphat. The names of the two royal 
families are intermixed for the first time since the separa- 
tion of the kingdoms. Jehoshaphat comes down in state 
to Samaria. A grand sacrificial feast for him and his 
suite is prepared. The two kings, an unprecedented 
sight, sit side by side, each on his throne, in full pomp, 



ELIJAH. 



139 



in the wide open space before the gateway of Samaria. 
Once again, though in a less striking form, is repeated the 
conflict between the true and false prophesyings, as at 
Carmel. Four hundred prophets of Baal, yet evidently 
professing the worship of Jehovah, and Israelites, not 
foreigners— all, in one mystic chorus, urged the war. 
One only exception was heard to the general acclamation ; 
not Elijah, but one who, according to Jewish tradition, 
had once before foretold the fall of Ahab— Micaiah the 
son of Imlah. 

In the battle that follows under the walls of Ramoth- 
Gilead, everything centres on this foredoomed destruction 
of Ahab. All his precautions are baffled. Early in the 
day, an arrow, which later tradition ascribed to the hand 
of Naaman, pierced the king's breastplate. He felt his 
death wound ; but, with a nobler spirit than had appeared 
in his life, he would not have it disclosed, lest the army 
should be discouraged. The tide of battle rose higher 
and higher till nightfall. The Syrian army retired to the 
fortress. Then, and not till then, as the sun went down, did 
the herald of the army proclaim, " Every man to his city, 
and every man to his country, for the king is dead." 

The long expected event had indeed arrived. The 
king, who had stood erect in the chariot till that moment, 
sank down dead. His body was carried home to the royal 
burial-place in Samaria. But the manner of his end left 



j. SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



its traces in a form not to be mistaken. The blood which 
all through that day had been flowing from his wound, 
had covered both the armour in which he was dressed 
and the chariot in which he had stood for so many hours. 
The chariot (perhaps the armour) was washed in state. 
But the bystanders remembered that the blood, shed as 
it had been on the distant battle field, streamed into the 
same waters which had been polluted by the blood of 
Naboth and his sons, and was lapped up from the margin 
by the same dogs and swine, still prowling round the spot ; 
and that when the abandoned outcasts of the city— 
probably those who had assisted in the profligate rites ol 
the temple of Ashtaroth— came, according to their shame- 
less usage, for their morning bath in the pool, they found 
it red with the blood of the first apostate King of Israel. 
So were accomplished the warnings of Elijah and 

Micaiah 

With the fall of Ahab a series of new characters appears 
on the eventful scene. Elijah still remained for a time, 
but only to make way for successors. . In the meeting of 
the four hundred Prophets at Samaria, he was not 
present. In the reign of Ahaziah and of Jehoram, he 
appears but for a moment. There was a letter, the only 
written prophecy ascribed to him, and the only link which 
connected him with the history of Judah, addressed to 
the young prince who reigned with his father Jehoshaphat 



ELIJAH. 



141 



at Jerusalem. There was a sudden apparition of a strange 
being, on the heights of Carmel, to the messengers whom 
Ahaziah had sent to consult an oracle in Philistia. They 
were passing, probably, along the "haunted strand," 
between the sea and the mountain. They heard the 
warning voice. They returned to their master. Their 
description could apply only to one man : it must be the 
wild Prophet of the desert whom he had heard described 
by his father and grandfather. Troop after troop was 
sent to arrest the enemy of the royal house, to seize the 
lion in his den. On the top of Carmel they saw the 
solitary form. But he was not to be taken by human 
force; stroke after stroke of celestial fire was to destroy 
the armed bands, before he descended from the rocky 
height, and delivered his message to the dying king. It 
was to this act, some centuries afterwards, not far from 
the same spot, that the two ardent youths appealed, and 
provoked that Divine rebuke which places the whole 
career of Elijah in his fitting place, as something in its 
own nature transitory, precursive, preparatory. 

Another was now to take his place. The time was come 
when "the Lord would take Elijah into heaven by a 
tempest." Those long wanderings were now over. No 
more was that awful figure to be seen on Carmel, nor that 
stern voice heard in Jezreel. For the last time he sur- 
veyed, from the heights of the western Gilgal, the whole 



14-2 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



scene of his former career — the Mediterranean Sea, 
Carmel, and the distant hills of Gilead — and went the 
round of the consecrated haunts of Gilgal, Bethel, Jericho. 
One faithful disciple was with him — the son of Shaphat, 
whom he had first called on his way from Sinai to 
Damascus, and who, after the manner of Eastern atten- 
dants, stood by him to pour water over his hands in his 
daily ablutions. With that tenderness which is some- 
times blended with the most rugged natures, at each 
successive halt the older Prophet turned to his youthful 
companion and entreated him to stay : " Tarry here, I 

pray thee, for the Lord hath sent me to Bethel 

to Jericho to Jordan." But in each case Elisha 

replied with an asseveration, that expressed his undivided 
and unshaken trust in his master and his master's God : 
" As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not 
leave thee." At Bethel, and at Jericho, the students in 
the schools that had gathered round those sacred spots, 
came out with the sad presentiment that for the last time 
they were to see the revered instructor who had given 
new life to their studies ; and they turned to their fellow- 
disciple : " Knowest thou not that the Lord will take 
away thy master from thy head to-day ? " And to every 
such remonstrance he replied with emphasis, " Yea, / 
know it ; hold ye your peace." No dread of that final 
parting could deter him from the mournful joy of seeing 



ELIJAH. 



143 



with his own eyes the last moments, of hearing with his 
own ears the last words, of the Prophet of God. " And 
they two went on." They went on alone. They de- 
scended the long weary slopes that lead from Jericho to 
the Jordan. On the upper terraces, or on the mountain- 
heights behind the city, stood "afar off," in awe, fifty of 
the young disciples; "and they two stood by Jordan." 
They stood by its rushing stream; but they were not 
to be detained by even this barrier. « The aged Gileadite 
cannot rest till he again sets foot on his own side of the 
river." He ungirds the rough mantle from around his 
shaggy frame-he "rolled it together," as if into a 
wonder-working staff; he "smote" the turbid river, as 
though it were a living enemy : and the "waters divided 
hither and thither, and they two went over on dry ground." 
And now they were on that further shore, under the shade 
of those hills of Pisgah and of Gilead, where, in former 
times, a Prophet, greater even than Elijah, had been 
withdrawn from the eyes of his people-whence, in his 
early youth, Elijah himself had descended in his august 
career. He knew that his hour was come ; he knew that he 
had at last returned home ; that he was to go whither 
Moses had gone before him; and he turned to Elisha to 
ask for his last wish. One only gift was in Elisha's mind 
to ask : " I pray thee, let a double portion— if it be only 



144 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



two morsels, two thirds — of thy spirit be upon me, the 
right of thy first-born soll.' , 

It was a hard thing that he had asked. But it was 
granted, on one condition. If he was able to retain to 
the end the same devoted perseverance, and keep his 
eye, set and steadfast, on the departing Prophet, the gift 
would be his. "And as they still went on," — upwards, 
it may be, towards the eastern hills, talking as they went 
— " behold there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses 
of fire, and parted them both asunder." This was the 
severance of the two friends. 

Then came a furious storm. " And Elijah went up in the 
tempest into heaven." In this inextricable interweaving 
of fact and figure, it is enough to mark how fitly such 
an act closes such a life. " My father, my father," Elisha 
cried, " the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." 
So Elijah had stood a sure defence to his country against 
all the chariots and horsemen that were ever pouring in 
upon them from the surrounding nations. So he now 
seemed, when he passed away, lost in the flames of the 
steeds and the car that swept him from the earth, as in the 
fire of his own unquenchable spirit— in the fire which had 
thrice blazed around him in his passage through his trou- 
bled earthly career. And as in its fiery force and energy, 
so in its mystery, the end corresponded to the beginning. 
He had appeared in the history we know not whence. 



ELIJAH. 



145 



and now he is gone in like manner. As of Moses, so 
of Elijah — "no man knoweth his sepulchre; no man 
knoweth his resting-place until this day." On some 
lonely peak, or in some deep ravine, the sons of the 
Prophets vainly hoped to find him, cast away by the 
Breath of the Lord, as in former times. "And they 
sought him three days, but found him not." He was 
gone, no more to be seen by mortal eyes ; or, if ever 
again, only in far distant ages, when his earthly likeness 
should once again appear in that same sacred region, or 
when, on the summit of " a high mountain apart, by them- 
selves," three disciples, like Elisha, should be gathered 
round a Master, whose departure they were soon expect- 
ing : " and there appeared unto them Moses and Elijah 
talking with Him." The Ascension or Assumption of 
Elijah stands out, alone in the Jewish history, as the 
highest representation of the end of a great and good 
career ; of death as seen under its noblest aspect — as the 
completion and crown of the life which had preceded it, 
as the mysterious shrouding of the departed within the 
invisible world. By a sudden stroke of storm and whirl- 
wind, or, as we may almost literally say of the martyrs of 
old, by chariots and horses of fire, the servants of God 
pass away. We know not where they rest; we may 
search high and low, in the height of the highest peak of 
our speculations, or in the depths of the darkest shadow 



146 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



of the valley of death. Legend upon legend may gather 
round them, as upon Elijah; but the Sacred Record 
itself is silent. One only mode or place there is where 
we may think of them, as of Elijah-in those who come 
afterwards in their power and spirit, or in that One 
Presence which still brings us near to them, in the 
Mount of the Transfiguration, in communion with the 

Beloved of God. 

The close of the career of Elijah is the beginning of 
the career of Elisha. It had been when he was plough- 
ing, with a vast array of oxen before him, in the rich 
pastures of the Jordan valley, that Elijah swept past him. 
Without a word, he had stripped off the rough mantle of 
his office, and thrown it over the head of the wondering 
youth. Without a moment's delay he had stalked on, as 
if he had done nothing. But Elisha had rushed after the 
prophet, and had obtained the playful permission to 
return for a farewell to his father and mother, in a solemn 
sacrificial feast, and had then followed him ever since. 
He had seen his master to the end. He had uttered a 
loud scream of grief as he saw him depart. He had rent 
asunder his own garments, as in mourning for the dead. 
The mantle that fell from Elijah was now his. From that 
act and those words has been drawn the figure of speech 
which has passed into a proverb for the succession of the 
gifts of gifted men. It is one of the representations by 



ELIJAH, 



147 



which, in the Roman catacombs, the early Christians 
consoled themselves for the loss of their departed friends. 
With the mantle he descends once more to the Jordan- 
stream, and wields it in his hand. The waters (so one 
version of the text represents the scene) for a moment 
hesitate : " they divided not." He invokes the aid of Him, 
to whose other holy name he adds the new epithet of " the 
God of Elijah ; " and then the waters " part hither and 
thither," and he passes over and is in his own native 
region. In the western valley of the Jordan, in the 
gardens and groves of Jericho, now fresh from its recent 
restoration, he takes up his abode, as " the lord " of his 
new disciples. They see at once that "the spirit of 
Elijah rests upon Elisha;" and they bow themselves to 
the ground before him. 

Jeioish Churchy ii. 282. 



L 2 



JONAH. 



T-HE Prophet Jonah, who was to Jeroboam II. what 
1 Ahijah had been to Jeroboam I., and what Elisha 
had been to Jehu, though slightly mentioned m the 
history, has been already thrice brought before us m 
Jewish tradition, and conveys an instruction reaching 
far beyond his times. The child of the widow of Zare- 
phath, the boy who attended Elijah to the wilderness, 
the youth who anointed Jehu, was believed to be the 
same as he whose story is related to us in the book of 
unknown authorship, of unknown date, of disputed 
meaning, but of surpassing interest-the Book of Jonah. 
Putting aside all that is doubtful, it stands out of the 
history of those wars and conquests with a truthfulness to 
human nature and a loftiness of religious sentiment that 
m0 re than vindicate its place in the Sacred Canon. First 



J N A H . 



149 



look at the vivid touches of the narrative even in detail. 
We see the Prophet hasting down from the hills of 
Galilee to the one Israelite port of Joppa. He sinks into 
the deep sleep of the wearied traveller as soon as he gets 
on board after his hurried journey. The storm rises ; the 
Tyrian sailors are all astir with terror and activity. They 
attack the unknown passenger with their " brief accumu- 
lated inquiries." " Why hath this happened to us ? What 
doest thou ? Whence art thou ? What is thy country ? 
Of what people art thou?" The good seamen, heathens 
as they are, struggle against the dreadful necessity which 
Jonah puts before them. They row with a force which 
seems to dig up the waves under their efforts, But 
higher and higher, higher and higher, the sea surges 
against them, like a living creature gaping for its prey. 
The victim is at last thrown in, and its rage ceases. This 
is the first deliverance, and it is the Divine blessing on 
the honest hearts and active hands of " those that go 
down to the sea in ships, and do their business in great 
waters." 

Then comes the unexpected rescue of the Prophet. 
He vanishes from view for three long days and nights. 
One of the huge monsters which are described in the 
Psalms as always sporting in the strange sea, and which 
in the early Christian paintings is represented as a vast 
drap-on, receives him into its capacious maw. His own 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS 



hymn of thanksgiving succeeds. He seems to be in 
the depths of the unseen world ; the river of the ocean 
whirls him round in its vast eddies; the masses of sea- 
weed enwrap him as in graveclothes ; the rocky roots of 
the mountains as they descend into the sea appear 
above him, as if closing the gates of earth against his 
return. The mighty fish is but the transitory instrument. 
That on which the Prophet in his hymn lays stress is not 
the mode of his escape, but the escape itself. 

The third deliverance is that of Nineveh. The great 
city rises before us, most magnificent of all the capitals 
of the ancient world— "great even unto God." It 
included parks, and gardens, and fields, and people 
and cattle, within its vast circumference. Twenty miles 
the Prophet penetrates into the city. He had still 
finished only one-third of his journey through it. His 
utterance, like that of the wild Preacher in the last days 
of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, is one piercing cry, 
from street to street and square to square. It reaches 
at last the king on his throne of state. The remorse for 
the wrong and robbery and violence of many genera- 
tions is awakened. The dumb animals are included, 
after the fashion of the East, in the universal mourning, 
and the Divine decree is revoked. 

Of this revocation, and of the lessons of the whole book, 
the concentrated force is contained in the closing scene. 



JONAH. I5 1 



The Prophet sits in his rude hut outside the Eastern gate, 
under the shade of the broad leaves of the flowering 
shrub, the rapid produce of the night. With the scorching 
blast of the early morning the luxuriant shelter withers 
away, and in his despairing faintness he receives the reve- 
lation of the Divine character, which is to him as that of 
the Burning Bush to Moses, or of the Vision on Horeb to 
Elijah, and which sums up the whole of his own history. 

He has been shown to us as one of the older Prophetic 
school, denouncing, rebuking, moving to and fro, without 
fixed habitation, like Elijah, flying from kingdom to 
kingdom, as if on the wings of the wind. Here we have 
embarked, for the first time in the sacred history, on 
the stormy waters of the Mediterranean, in a ship bound 
for the distant Tarshish on the coast of Spain. On the 
other side, we traverse, for the first time, the vast desert, 
and find ourselves in the heart of the great Assyrian 
capital. Jonah is the first apostle, though involuntary 
and unconscious, of the Gentiles. The inspiration of 
the Gentile world is acknowledged in the prophecy of 
Balaam, its nobleness in the Book of Job, its greatness 
in the reign of Solomon. But its distinct claims on the 
justice and mercy of God are first recognised in the Book 
of Jonah. It is the cry of the good heathen that causes 
the sea "to cease from her raging." It is the penitence 
of the vast population of the heathen Nineveh that 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



arouses the Divine pity even for the innocent children 
and the dumb, helpless cattle. 

And this lesson is still more forcibly brought out by 
contrast with the conduct of the Israelite Prophet, in 
whose timidity and selfishness is seen the same de- 
generacy that has already marked the descent from 
Elisha to Gehazi. He, indeed, is delivered, but " so as 
by fire." In the Prophet's despondency, which swerves 
aside from the heavy duty imposed upon him, many a 
coward spirit that shrinks from the call of truth and duty 
starts to see its true likeness. In the return of the 
tempest-tossed soul, de profundis, to the task which has 
now become welcome — in the long-sustained effort to 
which at last he winds himself up, is the same encourage- 
ment that was needed even by an apostle — " Simon, son 
of Jonas, lovest thou me?" But most of all is the 
warning thrust home in the rebuke to the narrow selfish- 
ness which could lament over the withering of his own 
bower, and yet complain that the judgment had not been 
carried out against the penitent empire of Nineveh. 
" More than six-score thousand persons that cannot 
discern between their right hand and their left," the 
Prophet had desired to see sacrificed to his preconceived 
notions of the necessities of a logical theory, or to the 
destruction of his country's enemies. "It displeased 
Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. I pray thee, 



JONAH. 



153 



was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? 

Therefore take, I beseech thee, my life from me ; 

for it is better for me to die than to live." Better (so it 
has often been said by Jonah's successors) to die, than 
that unbaptized infants should be saved— than that the 
reprobate should repent— than that God's threatenings 
should ever be revoked— than that the solemnity of 
life should be disturbed by the restoration of the thou- 
sands who have had no opportunity of knowing the 
Divine will— than that God should at last " be all in 
all." He sate under the shadow of his booth, still 
hoping, believing for the worst, "till he might see what 
would become of the city." 

In the scorching blast that beat upon the head of Jonah, 
when he " fainted and wished himself to die," and with 
a sharp cry repeated, in the pangs of his own destitution, 
what he had before murmured only as a theological diffi- 
culty, the sacred narrative leaves him. In the popular 
traditions of East and West, Jonah's name alone has 
survived the lesser Prophets of the Jewish Church. It 
still lives, not only in many a Mussulman tomb along the 
coasts and hills of Syria, but in the thoughts and devo- 
tions of Christendom. The marvellous escape from the 
deep, through a single passing allusion in the Gospel 
history, was made an emblem of the deliverance of 
Christ himself from the jaws of death and the grave. 



154 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



The great Christian doctrine of the boundless power of 
human repentance received its chief illustration from the 
repentance of the Ninevites at the preaching of Jonah. 
There is hardly any figure from the Old Testament which 
the early Christians in the Catacombs so often took as 
their consolation in persecution as the deliverance of 
Jonah on the seashore, and his naked form stretched out 
in the burning sun beneath the sheltering gourd. But 
these all conspire with the story itself in proclaiming that 
still wider lesson of which I have spoken. It is the rare 
protest of theology against the excess of theology— it is 
the faithful delineation, through all its varied states, of 
the dark, sinister, selfish side of even great religious 
teachers. It is the grand Biblical appeal to the common 
instincts of humanity, and to the universal love of God, 
against the narrow dogmatism of sectarian polemics. 
There has never been a "generation" which has not 
needed the majestic revelation of sternness and charity, 
each bestowed where most deserved and where least ex- 
pected in the " sign of the Prophet Jonah." 

Jewish Church, ii. 351. 



ISAIAH. 



TSAIAH stands out at once as the representative of his 
own age, and yet as a universal teacher of mankind. 
Whilst the other Prophets of the period in which he lived 
are known only to the bypaths of theology, in the quaint 
texts of remote preachers, Isaiah is a household word 
everywhere. For the first time since Elisha we have a 
prophet, of whose life and aspect we can be said to have 
any details. He was statesman as well as Prophet. He 
lived not in the remote villages of Judah like Micah, or 
wandering over hill and dale like Elijah and Amos, but in 
the centre of all political life and activity. His whole 
thoughts take the colour of Jerusalem. He is the first 
Prophet specially attached to the capital and the court. 
He was, according to Jewish tradition, the cousin of 
Uzziah, his father Amoz being held to be a younger 



i 5 6 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



son of Joash. He wrote Uzziah's life (2 Chron. xxvi. 22); 
and his first Prophecies, beginning in the close of that 
reign, illustrate the reign of Jotham, as well as of the 
three succeeding sovereigns. His individual and do- 
mestic life was a kind of impersonation of the Pro- 
phetic office. His wife was a Prophetess. According to 
a practice which seems to have prevailed throughout 
his career as through that of his contemporary Hosea, 
he himself and his children all bear Prophetic names : 
" Behold I and the children whom the Lord hath given 
me are for a sign and a wonder in Israel from the Lord of 
Hosts.'' He had a circle of disciples (Isa. viii. 16), pro- 
bably of Prophets, in whom his spirit was long continued. 
The length of his life, the grandeur of his social position, 
gave a force to what he said, beyond what was possible 
in the fleeting addresses of the humbler Prophets who had 
preceded him. There is a royal air in his attitude, in his 
movements, in the sweep of his vision, which commands 
attention. He was at once " great and faithful," in his 
" vision." Nothing escapes him in the events of his time. 
The older Prophetic writings are worked up by him into 
his own words. He does not break with the past. He 
is not ashamed of building on the foundation of those 
who have gone before him. All that there is of general 
instruction in Joel, Micah, or Amos, is reproduced in 
Isaiah. But his style has its own marked peculiarity and 



ISAIAH. 



157 



novelty. The fierce impassioned addresses of Joel and 
Nahum, the abrupt strokes, the contorted turns of Hosea 
and Amos, give way to something more of a continuous 
flow, where stanza succeeds to stanza, and canto to canto, 
with almost a natural sequence. Full of imagery as is his 
poetry, it still has a simplicity which was at that time so 
rare as to provoke the satire of the more popular Prophets. 
They, pushing to excess the nervous rhetoric of their pre- 
decessors, could not bear, as they expressed it, to be 
treated like children. " Whom shall he teach knowledge, 
and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? Them 
that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the 
breasts ! " Those constant recurrences of the general 
truths of spiritual religion, majestic in their plainness, 
seemed to them mere common-place repetitions " pre- 
cept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, 
line upon line, here a little, there a little." It is the uni- 
versal complaint of the shallow inflated rhetoricians of 
the professedly religious world against original genius and 
apostolic -simplicity, the complaint of the babblers of 
Ephesus against St. John, the protest of all scholastic and 
pedantic systems against the freeness and the breadth of 
a Greater than John or Isaiah. Such divine utterances 
have always appeared defective, and unimpassioned, and 
indefinite, in the ears of those who crave for wilder ex- 
citement and more elaborate systems, but have no less 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



found, for that very reason, a sure response in the child-like 
genuine, natural soul of every age. 

The general objects of Isaiah's mission are best indi- 
cated in the account which he himself has left us of his 
call, or (as we should now describe it) his conversion to 
the Prophetical office. 

" In the year that king Uzziah died," in the last year 
of that long reign of fifty-two years, as the life of the aged 
king, now on the verge of seventy, was drawing to its 
close in the retirement of the house of lepers, the young 
Isaiah was, or in vision seemed to be, in the court of the 
Temple. He stood at the gate of the porch, and gazed 
straight into the Holy Place, and into the Holy of Holies 
itself. All the intervening obstacles were removed. The 
great gates of cedar-wood were thrown open, the many- 
coloured veil that hung before the innermost sanctuary 
was drawn aside, and deep within was a throne as of a 
King, high and lifted up, towering as if into the sky. 
What was the form that sat thereon, here, as elsewhere, 
the Scripture forbears to describe. Only by outward and 
inferior images, as to us by secondary causes, could the 
Divine Essence be expressed. The long drapery of his 
train filled the Temple, as " His glory fills the earth." 
Around the throne, as the cherubs on each side of the 
mercy-seat, as the guards round the king, with head and 
feet veiled, figures floated like flying serpents, themselves 



ISAIAH. 



159 



glowing with the glory of which they were a part, whilst 
vast wings enfolded their faces and their feet, and sup- 
ported them in mid-air round the throne. From side to side 
went up a hymn of praise, which has since been incorpo- 
rated in the worship of Christendom, and which expressed 
that He was there who bore the great Name specially 
appropriated to the period of the Jewish monarchy and to 
the Prophetical order — " the Lord of Hosts." The sound 
of their voices rang like thunder to the extremity of 
the Temple. The pillars of the gate-way trembled, as 
if in another earthquake-shock, and the whole building 
within grew dark as with the smoke of a vast sacrifice. 
It was a sight and sound which the youthful Isaiah recog- 
nized at once as the intimation of Divinity. It was the 
revelation of the Divine Presence to him, as that of the 
Burning Bush to Moses, or of the Still Small Voice to Elijah, 
— the inevitable prelude to a Prophetic mission, couched 
in the form most congenial to his own character and 
situation. To him, the Royal Prophet of Jerusalem, this 
manifestation of royal splendour was the almost necessary 
vesture in which the Spiritual Truth was to be clothed. 
All his own sins — we know not what they were — and 
the sins of his nation — as we know them from himself 
and the contemporary Prophets — passed before him, and 
he said, " Woe is me, for I am lost, because I am a man 
of unclean lips, and I dwell amongst a people of unclean 



i6o 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



lips ; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of 

Hosts." On these defiled lips, therefore, the 

purifying touch was laid. From the naming altar, the 
flaming seraph brought a flaming coal. This was the 
creation, so to speak, of that marvellous style which has 
entranced the world ; the burning furnace which warms, as 
with a central fire, every variety of his addresses. Then 
came the voice from the sanctuary, saying, " Whom shall I 
send, who will go for Us ?" With unhesitating devotion the 
youth replied, " Here am I ; send me ! " In the words that 
follow is represented the whole of the Prophet's career. 
First, he is forewarned of the forlorn hopelessness of his 
mission. The louder and more earnest is his cry, the less 
will they hear and understand— the more clearly he sets 
the vision of truth before them, the less will they see. 
« Make the heart of this people gross, and make their 
ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their 
eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their 
hear!, and be converted and healed." These mournful 
words, well-known to us through their fivefold repetition 
in the New Testament as the description of the Jewish 
people in its latest stage of decay, were doubtless true in 
the highest degree of that wayward generation to which 
Isaiah was called to speak. His spirit sank within him, 
and he asked " O Lord, how long ? " The reply unfolded 
at once the darker and the brighter side of the future. 



i6i 



Not till successive invasions had wasted the cities, not 
till the houses had been left without a human being 
within them, not till the land had been desolate with 
desolation, would a better hope dawn ; not till the inva- 
sions of Pekah and Sennacherib had done their work, not 
till ten out of the twelve tribes had been removed far away, 
and there should have been a great forsaking in the midst 
of the land, would he be relieved from the necessity of 
delivering his stern, but fruitless warnings, against the 
idolatry, the dulness, the injustice of his people. But 
widely-spread and deeply-seated as was the national cor- 
ruption, there was still a sound portion left, which would 
live on and flourish. As the aged oak or terebinth of 
Palestine may be shattered, and cut down to the very 
roots, and yet out of the withered stump a new shoot 
may spring forth, and grow into a mighty and vigorous 
tree, so is the holy seed, the faithful few, of the chosen 
people. This is the true consolation of all Ecclesiastical 
history. It is a thought which is but little recognized in 
its earlier and ruder stages, when the inward and outward 
are easily confounded together. But it is the very message 
of life to a more refined and complex age, and it was the 
key-note to the whole of Isaiah's prophecies. It had, 
indeed, been dimly indicated to Elijah, in the promise of 
the few who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and in the 
still small whisper which was greater than thunder, earth- 

M 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



quake, and fire. But in Isaiah's time it first, if we may 
say so, became a living doctrine of the Jewish Church, 
and through him an inheritance of the Christian Church. 
" A remnant— -the remant :" this was his watchword. " The 
remnant shall return." This was the truth constantly 
personified before him in the name of his eldest son. A 
remnant of good in the mass of corruption, a remnant 
saved from the destructive invasions of Assyria, a burst of 
spring-time in the Reformation of Hezekiah ; and, far away 
in the distant future, a rod out of the stem, the worn-out 
stem of Jesse— a branch, a genuine branch, out of the 
withered root of David ; " and the wilderness and the 
solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice, 
and blossom as the rose ; it shall blossom abundantly, 
even with joy and singing, and sorrow and sighing shall 
flee away." 

Such was the hope and trust which sustained the Pro- 
phet through his sixty years of toil and conflict. In 
the weakness of Ahaz, in the calamities of Hezekiah, 
under the tyranny of Manasseh, Isaiah remained firm 
and steadfast to the end. Wider and wider his views 
opened, as the nearer prospects of his country grew darker 
and darker. First of the Prophets, he and those who fol- 
lowed him seized with unreserved confidence the mighty 
thought, that not in the chosen people, so much as in the 
nations outside of it, was to be found the ultimate well- 



ISAIAH. 



being of man, the surest favour of God. Truly might the 
Apostle say that Isaiah was " very bold " — " bold 
beyond " all that had gone before him — in enlarging the 
boundaries of the Church ; bold with that boldness, and 
large with that largeness of view, which so far from 
weakening the hold on things divine, strengthens it to a 
degree unknown in less comprehensive minds. For to 
him also, with a distinctness which makes all other antici- 
pations look pale in comparison, a distinctness which 
grew with his advancing years, was revealed the coming of 
a Son of David, who should restore the royal house of 
Judah and gather the nations under its sceptre. If some 
of these predictions belong to that phase of the Israelite 
hope of an earthly empire, which was doomed to disap- 
pointment and reversal, yet the larger part point to a glory 
which has been more than realised. Lineament after 
lineament of that Divine Ruler was gradually drawn by 
Isaiah or his scholars, until at last a Figure stands forth, so 
marvellously combined of power and gentleness and suf- 
fering, as to present in the united proportions of his 
descriptions the moral features of an historical Person, 
such as has been, by universal confession, known once, 
and once only, in the subsequent annals of the world. 

The task laid upon the Prophet was difficult, the times 
were dark. But his reward has been that, in spite of the 
opposition, the contempt, and the ridicule of his contem- 

M 2 



164 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



poraries, he has in after ages been regarded as the mes- 
senger, not of sad but of glad tidings, the Evangelical 
Prophet, the Prophet of the Gospel, in accordance with 
the meaning of his own name, which he himself regarded 
as charged with Prophetic significance— " the Divine 
Salvation." 

No other Prophet is so frequently cited in the New Tes- 
tament, for none other so nearly comes up to the spirit of 
Christ and the Apostles. No other single teacher of the 
Jewish Church has so worked his way into the heart of 
Christendom. When Augustine asked Ambrose which of 
the sacred books was best to be studied after his conver- 
sion, the answer was " Isaiah." The greatest musical 
composition of modern times, embodying more than any 
single confession of faith the sentiments of the whole 
Christian Church, is based in far the larger part on the 
Prophecies of Isaiah. The wild tribes of New Zealand 
seized his magnificent strains as if belonging to their own 
national songs, and chanted them from hill to hill, with 
all the delight of a newly discovered treasure. And, as 
in his age, so in our own, he must be pre-eminently re- 
garded as " the bard rapt into future times ! " None other 
of ancient days so fully shared with the modern philoso- 
pher, or reformer, or pastor, the sorrowful yet exalted 
privilege of standing, as we say, " in advance of his age," 
" before his time." Through his prophetic gaze we may 



ISAIAH. 



look forward across a dark and stormy present to the 
onward destiny of our race, which must also be the hope 
of each aspiring soul — " When the eyes of them that see 
shall not be dim, — when the ears of them that hear shall 
hearken — when the vile person shall no more be called 
liberal, nor the churl §aid to be bountiful — when the 
liberal shall devise liberal things, and by liberal things 
shall he stand, — when Ephraim shall not envy Judah, 
and Judah shall not vex Ephraim, — when thine eyes shall 
behold the King in his beauty, and see the land that is 
very far off." 

Jewish Church, ii. 44 j. 



ST. PETER. 



A MONGST the mountains of Galilee, amidst the 
recollections of those heroic tribes who had once 
"jeopardied their lives unto the death" against the 
host of Jabin— under the very shadow of those ancient 
hills which had once echoed the triumphant strains of 
Deborah and of Barak, was nursed that burning zeal, that 
unbroken patriotism, which made the name of Galilean 
so formidable even to the legions of the Empire. There, 
far removed from the mingled despotism and corruption 
of the schools and courts of Jerusalem, out of the country 
from which the chief priests and scribes were proudly 
convinced that no prophet could arise, we might fairly 
look for the freer and purer development of those older 
yearnings after the future, of that undying trust in the 
invisible, which had once characterised the Jewish race 



ST. 



PETER. 



— for an ardent hope of the promised deliverance, yet not 
hardened into formalism by the traditions of the Pharisee 
—for a soaring aspiration after divinity not yet chained 
to earth by the unbelief of the Sadducees. 

Such were all the Galilean apostles— such especially was 
Simon surnamed the Rock. No priest of the house of 
Levi, no warrior of the host of Judah, ever burnt with more 
fervent zeal in behalf of God's chosen people ; no pro- 
phet ever waited in more rapt expectation for the hope 
of the coming Deliverer, as it dawned upon him through 
the earthly images which bounded his immediate view 
in Babylon, or Edom, or Jerusalem, than did the fisher- 
man of Galilee as he hung upon the words and looks of 
that unknown Teacher who appeared on the shores of his 
native lake. Gradually, dimly, doubtfully, the vision rose 
within his mind; sometimes an awful consciousness of 
some Divine Presence, which, like Gideon or Manoah, 
he " prayed to depart from him ;" sometimes of an earthly 
empire, in which they who had "left all and followed 
Him," should reign as satraps of the King of Zion ; some- 
times of the blaze of glory which rested on the ancient 
tabernacle, as when he woke upon the holy mount, and 
spake " not knowing what he said." But, amidst all these 
dark and wavering images, his face was set in the right 
direction; and therefore, in that memorable scene of 
which every detail of place and circumstance is described 



i68 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



to us with unusual precision, when at Caesarea Philippi, 
far withdrawn from the gaze of the multitude beneath the 
snowy heights of Hermon, the question was solemnly 
put _" But whom say ye that I am?"— the heavenly 
truth flashed upon him, and his whole being expressed 
himself in the words which did indeed contain the 
meeting point between the two dispensations: "Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the Living God;" the anointed 
Messiah, whom prophets and kings had desired to see ; 
the Son of Him who once again, as at the burning bush, 
had come with ever-living power to visit and redeem His 
people. Well might the solemn blessing which follows 
announce to us, as with a trumpet's voice, that this was 
at once the crisis of Peter's life and of the Christian 
faith. " Thou hast told Me what I am, and I will tell 
thee what thou art." In that confession were wrapt up 
the truths which were to be the light of the future ages 
of Christendom ; on him who had uttered it devolved 
at once the awful privilege of passing from the Jew into 
the Christian; from the Prophet to the Apostle; from 
Simon the son of Jonah, into Peter the Rock. 

Gradually too, and doubtfully, and with many a wild 
and wayward impulse, did the enthusiasm of Peter kindle 
not merely into admiration for the Divine Teacher, but love 
for the Divine Friend. That central fire which was the life 
of the whole career of every one of the Apostles, so far as 



ST. PETER. 



169 



they were Apostles at all, in him existed, not more deeply 
and truly, it may be, but more visibly, as the one absorb- 
ing element into which his natural enthusiasm resolved 
itself. Amidst all the impetuous sallies of zeal — amidst all 
the weaknesses consequent on his presumption and vehe- 
mence — whether when he drew the sword in the garden, 
or gave way to the panic of the moment in the house of 
Caiaphas, this was still the sustaining, purifying, restoring 
principle : — " He needed not save to wash his feet, and 
was clean every whit." 

Whatever else might be the feelings with which he 
looked upon our Lord — with whatever grounds the early 
Church may have traced to his hand the representation 
of the Prophet and Lawgiver, which is preserved to us 
in the Gospel of St. Matthew, it may have been a true 
feeling which ascribed to his more personal and direct 
teaching that second Gospel which, though in sub- 
stance the same, is yet so remarkably contrasted with 
it in the minuteness and liveliness with which it records 
the outward actions, the look and manner, the very 
Syriac words which fell from Him who there appears 
not merely as the Fulfiller of the ancient covenant, but 
in the closer and more personal relation of the human 
Protector and Friend— a Friend not only in boundless 
power and goodness, but in all human sympathy and 
tenderness. "He loved St. John exceedingly," says 



170 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



Chrysostom, "but it was by Peter that He was exceed- 
ingly beloved." 

And now let us carry our thoughts a few years forwards 
and place ourselves in that early period of the Christian 
Church, of which our only historical record is to be found 
in the twelve first chapters of the Acts. It is indeed a 
scene only known to us dimly and partially; the chrono- 
logy, the details of life, the characters and fortunes of 
the several Apostles, are wrapt in almost impenetrable 
darkness. One colossal figure however emerges from 
the gloom, now more than ever the representative of his 
brethren, though from twelve they have grown to many 
thousands; though from the little flock of the first 
Apostles they have grown into a vast society striking its 
roots far and wide wherever the Jewish race extends. 
Can we doubt that this was the time when those pro- 
mises to Peter recurred to the minds of the disciples 
with all the force of prophecies which had received their 
full accomplishment? Can we doubt that when they 
saw him stand forth in the front of the whole body of the 
believers, in their first days of bereavement, for the election 
of a new Apostle, in their first hour of exultation on the 
day of Pentecost, in the first brunt of persecution from 
the Jewish Sanhedrin, Peter was to them indeed the 
Rock and Shepherd of the Church? Can we doubt that 
when they witnessed the thousands upon thousands of 



ST. PETER. 



171 



his converts, they felt that it was the rolling back of the 
everlasting doors by him who had the keys of the kingdom 
of heaven? that when the magic arts of Simon quailed 
before him, when the four quaternions of Herod's soldiers 
were unable to detain him in the guarded fortress, they 
felt that the embattled powers of evil were driven back 
before that power against which the gates of hell should 
not prevail? Can we doubt that when they saw the 
crowds rushing into the city and laying their sick along 
the streets if so be that the shadow of Peter passing by 
might overshadow some of them, — the awful judgment 
upon falsehood in the death of Ananias, — the Divine 
sanction of beneficence in the resurrection of Dorcas, — 
they felt that what Peter had bound on earth was indeed 
bound in heaven, that what Peter had loosed on earth was 
indeed loosed in heaven ? But as before, so now, there was 
yet a higher mission to discharge than to stand at the 
head of his brethren. He had been the first to recognise 
the manifestation of the Son, he was now to be the first 
to receive the manifestation of the Spirit. It is true that 
as before he had been the fervent Galilean, so now he was 
the Apostle of the Circumcision. Still in those appeals 
which swayed the hearts of thousands in the streets of 
Jerusalem, he takes his stand on David's tomb — he wel- 
comes the newest and latest of God's dispensations in the 
language of the oldest of the prophets. Still he and his 



172 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



brother Apostles are to be found entering the Beautiful 
Gate of the temple to join in its stated services; still 
at the close of day they may be seen lingering on its 
eastern height in that ancient cloister which bore the 
name of Solomon. The worship of the temple and the 
synagogue still went side by side with the prayers, and the 
breaking of bread from house to house; the Jewish 
family life was the highest expression of Christian unity, 
whether in the household of the great Apostle himself, 
when Abraham and Sarah were still the types of Chris- 
tian marriage ; or in that sacred circle of the brethren of 
our Lord, in whom with their wives and children the 
apostolic Age may have loved to trace the continued 
sanction of those domestic relations by which they were 
bound to our Lord himself. The fulfilment of the ancient 
law was the aspect of Christianity to which the attention 
of the Church was most directed, whether as set forth in 
the divine code of Christian duty contained in the earliest 
and most purely Jewish of the Gospels, that according to 
St. Matthew, or in the earliest and most purely Jewish of 
the Epistles, the Epistle of James the Just, now begin- 
ning to take his place in the Divine Economy as the 
type of all that strictly belonged to the primitive, original 
Israelite Christian. 

But was Christianity to be no more than a per- 
fected Judaism? Was Peter to be no more than the 



ST. PETER. 173 



founder of the Jerusalem Church? Was this to be 
the final end of those lofty aspirations of the ancient 
Prophets ; the adequate fulfilment of those parting words 
of his ascended Lord ? Was the existing framework of 
the Christian society, which, however widely ramified, 
was still confined to that Hebrew race, and those Hebrew 
institutions that bore on their very front the marks of 
approaching dissolution— was this the Church against 
which the gates of death were never to prevail ? Were all 
those generations of the ancient world who had lived 
before the law— all those countless hundreds of Gentile 
proselytes who even now were knocking for admittance 
at the gates of life— were all these, with all the heathen 
nations at their rear, to be for ever excluded from the 
kingdom of heaven ? Such were the questionings which 
must have arisen in the mind of the great Apostle, when 
on the roof at Jaffa, overlooking the waves of the western 
sea— the sea of Greece and Rome— the sea of the isles 
of the Gentiles— he knelt in trance and prayer waiting 
for the answer to his thoughts. No, it could not be ; no, 
although he himself shall pass away before a new Apostle, 
greater even than himself; though the first shall be last 
and the last first ; though he has borne the scorching 
blast of the rising sun, and the other has been called but 
at the eleventh hour— though all this take place, it must 
not be. What God hath cleansed, that Peter must not 



174 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



call common or unclean ; already the messengers of the 
Roman centurion are in the court below; once more 
he is to wield the keys of life and death — once more to 
loose the Christian Church for ever from that yoke which 
neither he nor his fathers had been able to bear — once 
more, wider far than ever mortal hand had up to that 
moment dared, to throw open the gates of heaven, even 
to the whole human race ; and then his work, his own 
especial work, as the first Apostle and the founder of the 
Church, was ended 

Without Peter, humanly speaking, the infant Church 
must have perished in its cradle ; he it was who under 
God's blessing caught the truth which was to be the polar 
star of its future history — who guided it safely through 
the dangers of its first existence ; who then, when the time 
came for launching it into a wider ocean, preserved it no 
less by his retirement from the helm which was destined 
for another hand. He was the Rock, not the builder of 
the Christian society — the Guardian of its gates, not the 
master of its innermost recesses — the Founder, not the 
propagator, nor the finisher — the Moses of its Exodus, not 
the David of its triumph, nor the Daniel of its latter days. 

And with him by the very force of the terms, the purely 
personal and historical part of our Lord's promise of 
necessity came to an end. Never again can Jewish zeal 
and Jewish forms so come into contact with the first 



ST. PETER. 175 



beginnings of Christian faith — never again can mortal 
man find himself so standing on the junction of two dis- 
pensations — the Church once founded can have no second 
roc k — the gates once opened can never again be closed— 
the sins which were then condemned, the virtues which 
were then blessed, the liberty which was then allowed, 
the license which was then forbidden, whether by word 
or deed, of the first Apostle, were once for all bound 
or loosed in the courts of heaven, never again to be 
unbound or bound by any earthly power whatever. 

But there is a sense and that of great practical import- 
ance, in which the example of Peter like that of the other 
Apostles lives and will live always. We know the feeling 
of suspicion, of contempt, of compassion with which the 
world regards those labourers in a good cause, who 
whether in praise or blame are called enthusiasts. We 
know how often this feeling is provoked or even deserved 
by the imperfections, the narrowness, the one-sided views 
with which such characters are often marked, and how 
strong is the temptation to regard them, if not as abso- 
lutely mischievous, at least as useless or despicable. It 
is as a warning against such a feeling as this that the 
blessing on Peter becomes the expression of a universal 
law of the Providence of God. Most signally indeed 
was it shown in the character of the first Apostle, that it 
was by no intellectual greatness or strength of mind 



176 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



that Christianity was first communicated to man. Most 
remarkable is the proof afforded of the Divine origin of 
our faith, when we contemplate the fact that he, who was 
undoubtedly its first human founder, cannot by the wildest 
license of conjecture be imagined capable of conceiving 
or inventing it. Grant that Peter was the chief of the 
first Apostles — and it follows almost of necessity that the 
Apostles were, as they professed to be, the disciples of no 
less than the Son of God. What is true however of 
Christianity in its first rise, is true also in a measure of all 
its subsequent exemplifications. Look at the history of 
any great movement for good in the world, and ask who 
took the first critical step in advance, whom it was that 
the wavering and undecided crowd chose to rally round 
as their leader and their champion? and will not the 
answer always be as it was in the apostolical age — not 
the man of wide and comprehensive thought, nor of 
deep and fervent love, but the characters of simple un- 
hesitating zeal which act instead of reflecting, which 
venture instead of calculating, which cannot or will not 
see the difficulties with which the first struggle of an un- 
tried reformation is of necessity accompanied. They 
may be doomed, like Peter, to retire before the advancing 
tread of a new Apostle ; but it is not till their task is 
finished ; they may perish, but their cause survives ; they 
have been the pioneers in the great work which they 



ST. PETER. 



177 



themselves but faintly and partially understood. And of 
such, whether in nations or individuals, the well-known 
comment of Origen, echoed as it is with more or less 
distinctness by so many illustrious voices from Tertullian 
down to Leo, is no exaggeration of the truth — " He 
who has Peter's faith is the Church's rock ; he who 
has Peter's virtues has Peter's keys." 

Semno)is on the Afiostolic Age, p. 84. 



X 



ST. PAUL 



JN examining what the character of St. Paul was, it is 
not necessary to go back to the times before his con- 
version. It was this which was his birthday into the 
world's history. He might no doubt have been the 
head of the Pharisaic faction in the last expiring struggles 
of his nation ; he might have rallied round him the nobler 
spirits of his countrymen, and by his courage and pru- 
dence have caused Jerusalem to hold out a few months or 
years more against the army of Titus. Still at best he would 
have been a Maccabaeus or a Gamaliel, and what a dif- 
ference to the whole subsequent fortunes of the world 
between a Maccabaeus and a Paul, between the Jewish 
Rabbi and the Apostle of the Gentiles ! It was not till 
the scales fell off from his eyes after the three-days' stupor, 
till the consciousness of his great mission awakened all 



ST. PAUL. 



179 



his dormant energies, that we really see what he was. 
That Divine Providence (which, as he himself tells us, 
Gal. i. 15, had "already separated him from his mo- 
ther's womb") had no doubt overruled the circumstances 
of his earlier education for the great end to which he was 
afterwards called ; in him, as in similar cases, the natural 
faculties were by his conversion "not unclothed but 
clothed upon :" the glory of Divine grace was shewn here 
as always not by repressing and weakening the human 
character, but by bringing it out for the first time in its 
full vigour. He was still a Jew; the zeal of his ancestral 
tribe which had caused him "to raven as a wolf in the 
morning" of his life, still glowed in his veins when he 
" returned in the evening to divide the spoil " of the 
mightier enemy whom he had defeated and bound; and 
in the unwearied energy and self-devotion, no less than 
the peculiar intensity of national feeling, which mark his 
whole life and writings, we discern the qualities which 
the Jewish people alone of all the nations then existing 
on the earth could have furnished. But there were other 
elements which his conversion developed into life besides 
the mere enthusiasm of the Jew shared equally with him by 
St Peter. I would not lay stress on the Grecian culture 
which he might have received in the schools of Tarsus, 
or the philosophical tone which we know to have charac- 
terised the lectures of Gamaliel, though doubtless these 

N 2 



i8o 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



had their share in the formation of his subsequent cha- 
racter. But whatever had been in former ages that 
remarkable union of qualities which had from the earliest 
times constituted the chosen people into a link between 
the East and the West, that was now in the highest degree 
exemplified in the character of Paul. Never before or 
since have the Jew and Gentile so completely met in one 
single person by an absolute though unconscious fusion 
of the two together; not founding a new system, but 
breathing a new spirit into that which already existed, 
and which only needed some such Divine impulse to call 
it into that fulness of life which had been stunted only, 
not destroyed. He knew nothing, it may be, of those 
philosophers and historians with whom we are so familiar, 
nor can we expect to find in him the peculiar graces of 
Athenian genius; yet it is in the dialectical skill of Aris- 
totle, the impassioned appeals of Demosthenes, the com- 
plicated sentences of Thucydides, far more than in the 
language of Moses or Solomon or Isaiah, that the form 
and structure of his arguments finds its natural parallel. 
He had never studied, it may be, or, if he had, would 
hardly have discerned those finer feelings of humanity of 
which the germs existed in Greece and Rome, but how re- 
markably are they exemplified in his own character ! What 
is that probing of the innermost recesses of the human 
heart and conscience -so unlike the theocratic visions 



ST. PAUL. 



181 



of the older prophets, — but the apostolical reflexion of the 
practical, individual, psychological spirit of the western 
philosophies. What is that inimitable union of self-respect 
with respect and deference to others which distinguishes 
his more personal addresses to his converts, but the anti- 
cipation of that refined and polished courtesy which has 
been ever esteemed th.e peculiar product of European 
civilisation ? What is that capacity for throwing himself 
into the position and feeling of others, — that becoming 
" all things to all men," which his enemies called worldly 
prudence, — that intense sympathy in the strength of 
which, as has been truly said, he " had a thousand friends, 
and loved each as his own soul, and seemed to live a 
thousand lives in them, and died a thousand deaths when 
he must quit them," which " suffered when the weaker 
brother suffered," which would not allow him to eat meat 
" whilst the world standeth lest he make his brother to 
offend" — what was all this but the effect of God's blessing 
on that boundless versatility of nature which had formed 
the especial mark of the Grecian mind for good and evil 
in all ages ? What was it but the significant maxim of the 
Roman poet, " Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum 
puto," transfigured for the first time in the heavenly 
radiance of truth and holiness ? 

It will not be supposed that in this brief view of the 
outward aspect of St. Paul's character I have attempted 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



to give a complete analysis of it. I have purposely con- 
fined myself to those natural and moral gifts which, 
as they were practically called into existence by and for 
the work which he was to perform, can only through and 
in that work be fully understood. There is perhaps no 
feature of the apostolical age which is more difficult for us 
to comprehend than the immense importance attached by 
St. Paul to so obvious a truth as the admission of the 
Ger. tiles into the Christian Church, still more the furious 
opposition by which its first announcement was met. 
Yet so it was. Other questions occupied the attention of 
the first dawn and of the final close of the apostolic age, 
but the one question above all others which absorbed its 
mid-day prime— which is the key to almost all the Epistles, 
which is the one subject of almost the whole history of the 
Acts— was not the foundation, not the completion of the 
Christian Church, but its universal diffusion ; the destruc- 
tion, not of Paganism, not of Gnosticism, but of Judaism. 
He therefore who stood at this juncture as the champion 
of this new truth at once drew the whole attention of the 
Christian world to himself— every other Apostle recedes 
from our view— east and west, north and south, from 
Jerusalem to Rome, from Macedonia to Melita, we 
hear of nothing, we see nothing but St. Paul and his 
opponents. 

It is only by bearing this steadily in mind that we 



ST. PAUL. 183 



can rightly conceive the nature of the conflict. He was 
not like a missionary of later times whose great work is 
accomplished if he can add to the number of his con- 
verts ; he was this, but he was much more than this : it 
was not the actual conversions themselves, but the prin- 
ciple which every conversion involved; not the actual 
disciples whom he gained, but he himself who dared to 
make them disciples, that constitutes the enduring interest 
of that life-long struggle. It was not merely that he 
reclaimed from Paganism the Grecian cities of Asia 
Minor, but that at every step which he took westward 
from Palestine he tore up the prejudices of ages. It was 
not merely that he cast out the false spirit from the 
damsel at Philippi, but that when he set his foot on the 
further shores of the iEgean sea, religion for the first time 
ceased to be Asiatic and became European. It was 
not merely that at Athens he converted Dionysius and 
Damaris, but that there was seen a Jew standing in the 
court of the Areopagus, and appealing to an Athenian 
audience, as children of the same Father, as worshippers, 
though unconsciously, of the same God. It was not that at 
Rome he made some impression more or less permanent 
on the slaves of the imperial palace, but that a descendant 
of Abraham recognized in the dense masses of that cor- 
rupt metropolis a field for his exertions as sacred as in 
the courts of the Temple of Jerusalem. It was not the 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



Roman Governor or the Ephesian mob, but the vast body 
of Judaizing Christians which was his real enemy ; not the 
worshippers of Jupiter and Diana, but those who made 
their boast of Moses and claimed to be disciples of Cephas. 
The conflict with Paganism was indeed the occasion 
of those few invaluable models of missionary preaching 
which are preserved to us in his speeches ; but it is the 
conflict with Judaism which forms the one continuous 
subject of that far more elaborate and enduring record of 
his teaching which is preserved to us in his Epistles. At 
every step of his progress he is dogged by his impla- 
cable adversaries, and at every step, as he turns to 
resist them, he flings back those words of entreaty, of 
rebuke, of warning, which have become the treasures of 
the Christian Church for ever. They deny his authority, 
they impugn his motives, they raise the watchword of the 
law and of circumcision, and the result is to be found in 
the early Epistles to Corinth, to Galatia, and to Rome. 
They harass him in his imprisonment at Rome, they 
blend their Jewish notions with the wilder theories of 
Oriental philosophy, and there rises before him in the 
Epistles to Ephesus, Colossae, and Philippi, the majestic 
vision of the spiritual Temple which is to grow out of the 
ruins of the old, of that Divine head of the whole race 
of man, before whom all temporary and transient rites, 
all lower forms of worship and philosophy fade away, in 



ST. PAUL. 



I8 5 



whom in the fulness of times all things were gathered 
together in one. They rise once more in the Asiatic 
Churches • all Asia is turned away from him ; his own 
companions have forsaken him ; he stands almost alone, 
under the shadow of impending death. But it is the last 
effort of a defeated and desperate cause. The victory is 
already gained, and in the three Epistles to Titus and 
Timotheus we may consent to recognise the last accents 
of the aged Apostle, now conscious that his contest is 
over ; some forebodings indeed we catch in them of that 
dark storm which was about to sweep within the next 
few years over the Christian and Jewish world alike ; but 
their general tone is one of calm respose — the mid-day 
heat is past away— the shades of evening are beginning 
to slope,— the gleam of a brighter sky is seen beyond, 
—and with the assured conviction that the object of his 
life was fully accomplished, he might well utter the words, 
" I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith." 

Sermons on the Apostolic Age, p. 165. 



ST. JOHN. 



^HE life of St. John, at first sight, seems shrouded in 
an atmosphere of religious awe which we cannot 
penetrate ; in him the earthly seems so completely ab- 
sorbed into the heavenly — the character, the thoughts, the 
language of the disciple so lost in that of the Master — 
that we tremble to draw aside the veil from that Divine 
friendship ; we fear to mix any human motives with 
a life which seems so especially the work of the- Spirit 

of God 

It was not by fluctuating and irregular impulses like 
Peter, nor yet by a sudden and abrupt conversion like 
Paul, that John received his education for the Apostle- 
ship; there was no sphere of outward activity as in 
Peter, no vehement struggle as in Paul ; in action, while 
Peter speaks, moves, directs, he follows, silent and 



ST. JOHN. 



I87 



retired. It would almost seem as if in St. John the still 
contemplation, the intuitive insight into heavenly things, 
which form the basis of his character, had been deepen- 
ed and solemnised by something of that more eastern 
and primitive feeling to which the records of the Jewish 
nation lead us back ; something of that more simple, 
universal, child-like spirit, which brooded over the cradle 
of the human race 3 which entitled the Mesopotamian 
Patriarch, rather than the Hebrew Lawgiver or the 
Jewish king, to be called "the friend of God;" which 
fitted the prophet of the Chaldsean captivity, rather than 
the native seers of Samaria or Jerusalem to be the " man 
greatly beloved." 

The whole sum of John's character must of necessity be 
contained in the one single fact that he was " the disciple 
whom Jesus loved." Once understand that from what- 
ever causes no obstacle intervened between him and that 
one Divine object which from the earliest dawn of youth 
to the last years of extreme old age was ever impressing 
itself deeper and deeper into his inmost soul, and his 
whole work on earth is at once accounted for. What- 
ever we can conceive of devoted tenderness, of deep 
affection, of intense admiration for goodness, we must 
conceive of him who even in the palace of the high 
priest, and at the foot of the cross, was the inseparable 
companion of his Lord ; whatever we can conceive of 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



a gentleness and holiness ever increasing in depth and 
purity, that we must conceive of the heart and mind 
which produced the Gospel and Epistles of St. John. 

One phase, however, of his character there was, which 
might at first sight seem inconsistent with what has just 
been said, but which nevertheless was the aspect of it 
most familiar to the minds of the earliest Church. It was 
not as John the Beloved Disciple, but as John the Son 
of Thunder — not as the Apostle who leaned on his 
Master's breast at supper, but as the Apostle who called 
down fire from heaven, who forbade the man to cast out 
devils, who claimed with his brother the highest places 
in the kingdom of heaven, — that he was known to the 
readers of the three first Gospels. But in fact it is in 
accordance with what has been said, that in such a cha- 
racter the more outward and superficial traits should have 
attracted attention before the complete perfection of that 
more inward and silent growth which was alone essential 
to it ; and, alien in some respects as the bursts of fiery 
passion may be from the usual tenor of St. John's 
later character, they fully agree with the severity, almost 
unparalleled in the New Testament, which marks the 
well-known anathema in his Second Epistle, and the 
story, which there seems no reason to doubt, of Cerin- 
thus and the bath. It is not surprising that the deep 
stillness of such a character as this should, like the 



ST. JOHN. 



oriental sky, break out from time to time into tempests 
of impassioned vehemence 5 still less that the character 
which was to excel all others in its devoted love of good 
should give indications— in its earlier stages even in 
excess— of that intense hatred of evil, without which love 
of good can hardly be said to exist. 

It was not till the removal of the first and the second 
Apostle from the scene of their earthly labours that 
there burst upon the whole civilised world that awful 
train of calamities, which breaking as it did on Italy, on 
Asia Minor, and on Palestine, almost simultaneously, 
though under the most different forms, was regarded alike 
by Roman, Christian, and Jew, as the manifestation of 
the visible judgment of God. It was now, if we may 
trust the testimony alike of internal and external proof, 
in the interval between the death of Nero and the fall of 
Jerusalem, when the roll of apostolical epistles seemed 
to have been finally closed, when every other inspired 
tongue had been hushed in the grave, that there rose 
from the lonely rock of Patmos, that solemn voice which 
mingled with the storm that raged around it, as the dirge 
of an expiring world; that under the "red and lowering 
sky," which had at last made itself understood to the 
sense of the dullest, there rose that awful vision of 
coming destiny, which has received the expressive name 
of the Revelation of St. John the Divine 



190 



SCRIPTURE PORTRAITS. 



As it is Love that pervades our whole conception of 
the teaching of St. John, so also it pervades our whole 
conception of his character. We see him — it surely is no 
unwarranted fancy — we see him declining with the de- 
clining century • every sense and faculty waxing feebler, 
but that one divinest faculty of all burning more and 
more brightly ; we see it breathing through every look 
and gesture ; the one animating principle of the atmos- 
phere in which he lives and moves ; earth and heaven, the 
past, the present, and the future, alike echoing to him 
that dying strain of his latest words, " We love Him be- 
cause He loved us." And when at last he disappears 
from our view in the last pages of the Sacred Volume, 
ecclesiastical tradition still lingers in the close : and in 
that touching story, not the less impressive because so 
familiar to us, we see the aged apostle borne in the arms 
of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there 
repeating over and over again the same saying, " Little 
children, love one another;" till, when asked why he 
said this and nothing else, he replied in those well- 
known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of 
the Beloved Disciple, "Because this is our Lord's 
command, and if you fulfil this, nothing else is needed." 

Such was the life of St. John; the sunset, as I 
venture to call it, of the apostolic age : not amidst the 
storms which lowered around the Apocalyptic Seer, but 



ST. JOHN. 



191 



the exact image of those milder lights and shades which 
we know so well even in our own native mountains, 
every object far and near brought out in its due pro- 
portions, the harsher features now softly veiled in the 
descending shadows, and the distant heights lit up with 
a far more than morning or mid-day glory in the expiring 
glow of the evening heavens. 

Sermons on tJie A postolic Age, p. 245. 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE 
EVENTS. 



o 



THE PASSOVER. 



^HERE are some days of which the traces left on the 
mind of a nation are so deep that the events them- 
selves seem to live on long after they have been num- 
bered with the past. Such was the night of the month 
Nisan in the eighteenth century before the Christian era. 
" It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord, for 
bringing them out of the land of Egypt ; this is that night 
of the Lord to be observed of the children of Israel in their 
generations." Dimly we see and hear, in the darkness 
and the confusion of that night, the stroke which at last 
broke the heart of the king and made him let Israel go. 
" At midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the 
land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sate on 
his throne, to the first-born of the captive that was in the 
dungeon ; and all the first-born of cattle. And Pharaoh 

o 2 



196 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the 
Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt,"— the loud, 
frantic, funeral wail, characteristic of the whole nation,— 
" for there was not a house where there was not one dead." 
In the Egyptian accounts this destruction was described 
as effected by an incursion of the Arabs. The Jewish 
Psalmist ascribes it to the sudden visitation of the plague. 
"He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life 
over unto the pestilence." Egyptian and Israelite each 
regarded it as a Divine judgment on the worship, no less 
than the power, of Egypt. " The Egyptians buried their 
first-born whom the Lord had smitten; upon their gods 
also did the Lord execute judgment." 

But whilst of the more detailed effect of that night on 
Egypt we know nothing, for its effects on Israel it might 
almost be said that we need not go back to any written 
narrative. It still moves and breathes amongst us. 

Amongst the various festivals of the Jewish Church, 
one only (till the institution of those which commemo- 
rated the much later deliverances from Human and from 
Antiochus Epiphanes) was distinctly historical. In the 
feast of the Pesach, Pascha, or Passover, the scene of the 
flight of the Israelites, its darkness, its hurry, its con- 
fusion, was acted year by year, as in a living drama. In 
part it is still so acted throughout the Jewish race ; in all 
its essential features (some of which have died out every- 



THE PASSOVER. 



197 



where else) it is enacted, in the most lively form, by the 
solitary remnant of that race which, under the name of 
Samaritan, celebrates the whole Paschal sacrifice, year 
by year, on the summit of Mount Gerizim. Each house- 
holder assembled his family around him; the feast was 
within the house ; there was no time or place for priest 
or sacred edifice, — even after the establishment of the 
sanctuary at Jerusalem, this vestige of the primitive or the 
irregular celebration of that night continued, and not in 
the Temple courts, but in the upper chamber of the private 
houses, was the room prepared where the Passover was 
to be eaten. The animal slain and eaten on the occasion 
was itself a memorial of the pastoral state of the people. 
The shepherds of Goshen, with their flocks and herds, 
whatever else they could furnish for a hasty meal, would 
at least have a lamb or a kid, — " a male of the first year 
from the sheep or from the goats." As the sun set 
behind the African desert, they were to strike its blood 
on the door-posts of the house as a sign of their deliver- 
ance. At Gerizim, amidst the wild recitation of the narra- 
tive of the original ordinance, the chiefs of the Samaritan 
community rush forward, and, as the blood flows from 
the throat of the slaughtered sheep, they dip their fingers 
in the stream ; and each man, woman, and child, even to 
the child in arms, was, till recently, marked on the fore- 
head with the red stain. On the cruciform wooden spit 



198 MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 

— this we know from Justin Martyr was the practice in 
ancient times — the lamb is left to be roasted whole, after 
the manner of Eastern feasts. 

Night falls ; the stars come out ; the bright morn is in 
the sky • the household gathers round, and then takes 
place the hasty meal, of which every part is marked by 
the almost frantic haste of the first celebration, when 
Pharaoh's messengers were expected every instant to 
break in with the command, " Get you forth from among 
my people ; Go ! Begone ! " The guests of each house- 
hold at the moment of the meal rose from their sitting 
and recumbent posture, and stood round the table on 
their feet. Their feet, usually bare within the house, 
were shod as if for a journey. Each member of the 
household, even the women, had staffs in their hands, as 
if for an immediate departure ; the long Eastern garments 
of the men were girt up, for the same reason, round their 
loins. The roasted lamb was torn to pieces, each snatch- 
ing and grasping in his eager fingers the morsel which 
he might not else have time to eat. Not a fragment is 
left for the morning, which will find them gone and far 
away. The cakes of bread which they broke and ate 
were tasteless from the want of leaven, which there had 
been no leisure to prepare ; and, as on that fatal mid- 
night they " took their dough before it was leavened, 
their kneading troughs being bound up in their clothes 



THE PASS OVER. 



199 



on their shoulders," so the recollection of this charac- 
teristic incident was stamped into the national memory 
by the prohibition of every kind of leaven or ferment for 
seven whole days during the celebration of the feast— 
the feast, as it was from this cause named, of unleavened 
bread. And, finally, in the subsequent union of later 
and earlier usages, the thanksgiving for their deliverance 
was always present. The reminiscence of their bondage 
was kept up by the mess of bitter herbs, which gave a 
relish to the supper. That bitter cup again was sweet- 
ened by the festive character which ran through the whole 
transaction and gave it in later generations what in its 
first institution it could hardly have had —its full social and 
ecclesiastical aspect. The wine-cups were blessed amid the 
chants of the long-sustained hymn from the 113th to the 
1 1 8th Psalm, of which the thrilling parts must always have 
been those which sing how " Israel came out of Egypt 
how "not unto them, not unto them, but unto Jehovah's 
name was the praise to be given for ever and ever." 

So lived on for centuries the tradition of the Deliver- 
ance from Egypt; and so it lives on still, chiefly in the 
Hebrew race, but, in part, in the Christian Church also. 
Alone of all the Jewish festivals, the passover has out- 
lasted the Jewish polity, has overleaped the boundary 
between the Jewish and Christian communities. With the 
other festivals of the Israelites we have no concern : even 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



the name of the weekly festival of the Sabbath only con- 
tinues amongst us by a kind of recognised solecism, and 
its day has been studiously changed. But the name of 
the Paschal feast in the largest proportion of Christendom 
is still, unaltered, the name of the greatest Christian 
holiday. The Paschal Lamb, in deed or in word, is 
become to us symbolical of the most sacred of all events. 
The Easter full moon, which has so long regulated the 
calendars of the Christian world, is, one may say, the 
lineal successor of the bright moonlight which shed its 
rays over the palm-groves of Egypt on the fifteenth night 
of the month Nisan ; Jew and Christian, at that season, 
both celebrate what is to a certain extent a common 
festival : even the most sacred ordinance of the Christian 
religion is, in its outward form, a relic of the Paschal 
supper, accompanied by hymn and thanksgiving, in the 
upper chamber of a Jewish household. The nature of 
the bread which is administered in one large section of 
the Christian Church bears witness, by its round un- 
leavened wafers, to its Jewish origin and to the disorder 
of the hour, when it was first eaten. And as, in the 
course of history, ecclesiastical as well as civil, events the 
most remote and the most trivial constantly ramify into 
strange and unlooked-for consequences,— the attempt of 
the Latin Church to perpetuate, and of the Eastern Church 
to cast off, this historical connexion with the peculiar 



201 



usage of the ancient people from which they both sprang, 
became one of the chief causes or pretexts of their final 
rupture from each other. 

It is difficult to conceive the migration of a whole 
nation under such circumstances. But those who have 
seen the start of the great caravans of pilgrims in the 
East, may form some notion of the silence and order with 
which even very large masses break up from their en- 
campments, and, as in this instance, usually in the dark- 
ness and the cool of the night, set out on their journey, 
the torches flaring before them, the train of camels and 
asses spreading far and wide through the broad level 

desert 

South-eastward they went— not by the short and direct 
road to Palestine, but by the same circuitous route, 
through the wilderness of the Red Sea, which their 
ancestors had followed in bearing away the body of 
Jacob, as now they were bearing off, with different 
thoughts and aims, the coffin which contained the em- 
balmed remains of Joseph 

The Israelites were encamped on the western shore of 
the Red Sea, when suddenly a cry of alarm ran through 
the vast multitude. Over the ridges of the desert hills 
were seen the well-known horses, the terrible chariots of 
the Egyptian host : " Pharaoh pursued after the children 
of Israel, and they were sore afraid." 



202 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



" They were sore afraid ; " and in that terror and per- 
plexity the sun went down behind the huge mountain 
range which rose on their rear, and cut off their return to 
Egypt ; and the dark night fell over the waters of the sea 
which rolled before them, and cut of! their advance into 
the desert. So closed in upon them that evening ; where 
were they when the morning broke over the hills of 
Arabia ? where were they, and where were their enemies ? 
. They stood in safety on the further shore ; and the 
chariots, and the horsemen, and the host of Pharaoh had 
vanished in the waters. Let us calmly consider, so far 
as our knowledge will allow us, the extent of such a 
deliverance effected at a moment so critical. 

First, we must observe what may be called the whole 
change of the situation. They had passed in that night 
from Africa to Asia ; they had crossed one of the great 
boundaries which divide the quarters of the world ; a 
thought always thrilling, how much more when we reflect 
on what a transition it involved to them. Behind the 
African hills, which rose beyond the Red Sea, lay the 
strange land of their exile and bondage — the land of 
Egypt with its mighty river, its immense buildings, its 
monster-worship, its grinding tyranny, its overgrown 
civilization. This they had left to revisit no more : the 
Red Sea flowed between them; "the Egyptians whom 
they saw yesterday they will now see no more again for 



THE PASSOVER. 



203 



ever." And before them stretched the level plains of the 
Arabian desert, the desert where their fathers and their 
kindred had wandered in former times, where their great 
leader had fed the flocks of Jethro, through which they 
must advance onwards till they reach the Land of Promise. 
Further, this change of local situation was at once a 
change of moral condition. From slaves they had become 
free j from an oppressed tribe they had become an inde- 
pendent nation. It is their deliverance from slavery. It 
is the earliest recorded instance of a great national eman- 
cipation. In later times Religion has been so often and 
so exclusively associated with ideas of order, of obedi- 
ence, of submission to authority, that it is well to be 
occasionally reminded that it has had other aspects also. 
This, the first epoch of our religious history, is, in its 
original historical significance, the sanctification, the 
glorification of national independence and freedom. 
Whatever else was to succeed to it, this was the first stage 
of the progress of the Chosen People. And when in the 
Christian Scriptures and in the Christian Church we find 
the passage of the Red Sea taken as the likeness of the 
moral deliverance from sin and death, — when we read in 
the Apocalypse of the vision of those who stand victorious 
on the shores of " the glassy sea mingled with fire, having 
the harps of God and singing the song of Moses the 
servant of God, and the song of the Lamb " — these are 



204 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



so many sacred testimonies to the importance, to the 
sanctity of freedom, to the wrong and the misery of in- 
justice, oppression, and tyranny. The word " Redemp- 
tion," which has now a sense far holier and higher, first 
entered into the circle of religious ideas at the time when 
God " redeemed 'His people from the house of bondage." 

But it was not only the fact, but the mode of their 
deliverance which made this event so remarkable in itself, 
in its applications, and in its lasting consequences. We 
must place it before us, if possible, not as we conceive it 
from pictures and from our own imaginations, but as in 
the words of the Sacred narrative, illustrated by the 
Psalmist, and by the commentary of Josephus and Philo. 
The Passage, as thus described, was effected not in the 
calmness and clearness of daylight, but in the depth of 
midnight, amidst the roar of the hurricane which caused 
the sea to go back — amidst a darkness lit up only by 
the broad glare of the lightning, as "the Lord looked 
out" from the thick darkness of the cloud. "The waters 
saw Thee, O God, the waters saw Thee, and were afraid ; 
the depths also were troubled. The clouds poured out 
water ; the air thundered ; Thine arrows went abroad ; the 
voice of Thy thunder was heard round about ; the light- 
nings shone upon the ground ; the earth was moved and 
shook withal." We know not, they knew not, by what 
precise means the deliverance was wrought ; we know not 



THE PASSOVER. 



205 



by what precise track through the gulf the passage was 
effected. We know not, and we need not know ; the 
obscurity, the mystery, here, as elsewhere, was part of the 
lesson. "God's way was in the sea, and His paths in 
the great waters, and His footstep were not known." All 
that we see distinctly is, that through this dark and 
terrible night, with the enemy pressing close behind, and 
the driving sea on either side, He "led His people like 
sheep by the hand of Moses and Aaron." 

Long afterwards was the recollection preserved in all 
their religious -imagery. Living as they did apart from 
all maritime pursuits, yet their poetry, their devotion, 
abounds with expressions which can be traced back only 
to this beginning of their national history. They had 
been literally " baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in 
the sea." And as, in the case of the early Christians, the 
plunge in the baptismal bath was never forgotten, so even 
in the dry inland valleys of Palestine, danger and deliver- 
ance was -always expressed by the visions of sea and 
storm. "All thy waves and storms are gone over me." 
" The springs of water were seen, and the foundations 
of the round world were discovered at Thy chiding, O 
Lord, at the blasting of the breath of Thy displeasure. 

He drew me out of many waters." Their whole 
national existence was a thanksgiving, a votive tablet, for 
their deliverance in and from and through the Red Sea. 



206 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



But another and a still more abiding impression was 
that this deliverance — the first and greatest in their 
history — was effected, not by their own power, but by the 
power of God. There are moments in the life both of 
men and of nations, both of the world and of the Church, 
when vast blessings are gained, vast dangers averted, 
through our own exertions— by the sword of the con- 
queror, by the genius of the statesman, by the holiness of 
the saint. Such, in Jewish history, was the conquest of 
Palestine by Joshua, the deliverances wrought by Gideon, 
by Samson, and by David. Such, in Christian history, 
were the revolutions effected by Clovis, by Charlemagne, 
by Alfred, by Bernard, and by Luther. But there are 
moments of still higher interest, of still more solemn 
feeling, when deliverance is brought about not by any 
human energy, but by causes beyond our own control. 
Such, in Christian history, are the raising of the siege of 
Leyden, and the overthrow of the Armada; and such, 
above all, was the passage of the Red Sea. 

Whatever were the means employed by the Almighty — 
whatever the path which He made for Himself in the 
great waters, it was to Him, and not to themselves, that 
the Israelites were compelled to look as the source of 
their escape. " Stand still, and see the salvation of 
Jehovah," was their only duty. " Jehovah had triumphed 
gloriously " was their only song of victory. It was a 



THE PASSOVER. 



207 



victory into which no feeling of pride or self-exaltation 
could enter. It was a fit opening of a history and of 
a character which was to be specially distinguished from 
that of other races by its constant and direct dependence 
on the Supreme Judge and Ruler of the world. Greece and 
Rome could look back with triumph to the glorious days 
when they had repulsed their invaders, and risen on their 
tyrants, or driven out their kings. But the birthday of 
Israel-the birthday of the religion, of the liberty, of the 
nation, of Israel— was the Passage of the Red Sea;— 
the likeness in this, as in many other respects, of the yet 
greater events in the beginnings of the Christian Church, 
of which it has been long considered the anticipation and 
the emblem. It was the commemoration, not of what 
man has wrought for God, but of what God has wrought 
for man. No baser thoughts, no disturbing influences, 
could mar the overwhelming sense of thankfulness with 
which, as if after a hard-won battle, the nation found its 
voice in the first Hebrew melody, in the first burst of 
national poetry, which still lives on, through Handel's 
music, to keep before the mind of all Western Christendom 
the day " when Israel came out of Egypt, and the house 
of Jacob from a strange land." 

fewisk Church, i 120. 



THE BATTLE OF JEZREEL. 



HE Midianite encampment was on the northern side 



of the valley, between Gilboa and Little Hermon. 
The Israelite encampment was on the slope of Mount 
Gilboa, by the spring of Jezreel, called from the incident 
of this time, "the Spring of trembling." There had 
been the usual war-cry — "What man is there that is 
fearful and faint-hearted ? Let him go and return unto 
his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his 
heart." It was modified on this occasion by its adaptation 
either to the peculiar war-cry of Manasseh, or to the 
actual scene of the encampment — " Whosoever is afraid, 
let him return from Mount Gilead," or (according to 
another reading) " from Mount Gilboa." This had 
removed the cowards from the army. The next step 
was to remove the rash. At the brink of the spring, 




THE BATTLE OF JEZREEL. 



209 



those who rushed headlong down to quench their thirst, 
throwing themselves on the ground, or plunging their 
mouths into the water, were rejected ; those who took up 
the water in their hands and lapped it with self-restraint, 
were chosen. 

Gideon, thus left alone with his three hundred men, 
now needed an augury for himself. This was granted to 
him. It was night, when he and his armour-bearer des- 
cended from their secure position above the spring to the 
vast army below. They reached the outskirts of the 
tents amidst the deep silence which had fallen over the 
encampment, where the thousands of Arabs lay wrapt 
in sleep or resting from their plunder, with their in- 
numerable camels moored in peaceful repose around 
them. One of the sleepers, startled from his slumber, 
was telling his dream to his fellow. A thin round cake 
of barley bread, of the most homely bread, from those 
rich corn-fields, those numerous threshing-places, those 
deep ovens sunk in the ground, which they had been 
plundering, came rolling into the camp, till it reached the 
royal tent in the centre, which fell headlong before it, 
and was turned over and over, till it lay flat upon the 
ground. Like the shadow of Richard, which, centuries 
later, was believed to make the Arab horses start at the 
sight of a bush, one name only seemed to occur as the 
interpretation of this sign : " The sword of Gideon, the 

p 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



son of Joash." The Awful Listener heard the good omen, 
bowed himself to the ground in thankful acknowledgment 
of it, and disappeared up the mountain-side. The sleepers 
and the dreamers slept on to be waked up by the blast 
of the pastoral horns, and at the same moment the 
' crashing of the three hundred pitchers, and the blaze of 
the three hundred torches, and the shout of Israel, always 
terrible, which broke through the stillness of the midnight 
air from three opposite quarters at once. In a moment 
the camp was rushing hither and thither in dark confusion 
with the dissonant " cries" peculiar to the Arab race. 
Every one drew his sword against every other, and the 
host fled headlong down the descent to the Jordan to 
the spots known as the house of the Acacia and the 
margin of the Meadow of the Dance. 

Their effort was to cross the river at the fords of 
Beth-barah. It was immediately under the mountains of 
Ephraim, and to the Ephraimites accordingly messengers 
were sent to interrupt the passage. The great tribe, 
roused at last, was not slow to move. By the time they 
reached the river, the two greater chiefs had already 
crossed, and the encounter took place with the two 
lesser chiefs, Oreb and Zeeb. They were caught and slain : 
one at a winepress, known afterwards as the winepress 
of Zeeb, or the Wolf; the other on a rock, which from him 
took the name of the rock of Oreb, or the Raven; round 



THE BATTLE OF JEZREEL. 211 



which, or upon which, the chief carnage had taken place, 
— so that the whole battle was called in after times, " the 
slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb." The Ephraim- 
ites passed the Jordan, and overtook Gideon and 
presented to him the severed heads. Their remonstrance 
at not having before been called to take part in the 
struggle, is as characteristic of the growing pride of 
Ephraim, as his answer is of the forbearance and calm- 
ness which places him at the summit of the heroes of 
this age. The gleaning of Ephraim in the bloody heads 
of those chieftains, he told them, was better than the full 
vintage of slaughter, in the unknown multitudes by the 
little family of Abiezer. 

He, meantime, was in full chase of his enemies 
" Faint, yet pursuing," is the expressive description of 
the union of exhaustion and energy which has given the 
words a place in the religious feelings of mankind. 
Succoth and Penuel, the two scenes of Jacob's early life, on 
the track of his entrance from the East, as of the Midian- 
ites' return towards it, were Gideon's two halting-places 
— the little settlement in the Jordan-valley, now grown 
into a nourishing town, with its eighty-seven chiefs, — the 
lofty watch-tower overlooking the country far and wide. 
At Karkor, far in the desert, beyond the usual range of 
the nomadic tribes, he fell upon the Arabian host They 
had fled with a confusion which could only be compared 

p 2 



212 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



to clouds of chaff and weeds flying before the blast of a 
furious hurricane, or the rapid spread of a conflagration 
where the flames leap from tree to tree and from hill to 
hill in the dry forests of the mountains ; and in the midst 
of this were taken the two leaders of the horde, Zeba 
and Zalmunna. Then came the triumphant return, and 
the vengeance on the two cities for their inhospitalities. 
The tower of the Divine Vision was razed, the chiefs of 
Succoth were beaten to death with the thorny branches 
of the neighbouring acacia groves. The two kings of 
Midian, in all the state of royal Arabs, were brought 
before the conqueror on their richly caparisoned drome- 
daries. They replied with all the spirit of Arab chiefs 
to Gideon, who for a moment almost gives way to his 
gentler feelings at the sight of such fallen grandeur. But 
the remembrance of his brother's blood on Mount Tabor 
steels his heart, and when his boy, Jether, shrinks from 
the task of slaughter, he takes their lives with his own 
hand, and gathers up the vast spoils, the gorgeous 
dresses and ornaments, with which they and their camels 
were loaded. 

How signal the deliverance was, appears from its many 
memorials : the name of Gideon's altar, of the spring of 
Harod, of the rock of Oreb, of the winepress of Zeeb; 
whilst the Prophets and Psalmist allude again and again 
to details not mentioned in the history—" The rod of 



THE BATTLE OF JEZREEL. 



213 



the oppressor broken as in the day of Midian"— the 
wild panic of " the confused noise and garments rolled in 
blood"— the streams of blood that flowed round " the 
rock of Oreb "—the insulting speeches, and the desperate 
rout, as before fire and tempest, of the four chiefs whose 
names passed even into a curse — " Make thou their 
nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, yea, all their princes like 
Zeba and Zalmunna." 

But the most immediate proof of the importance of 
this victory was that it occasioned the first direct attempt 
to establish the kingly office, and render it perpetual in 
the house of Gideon. " Rule thou over us, both thou 
and thy son, and thy son's son : for thou hast delivered 
us from the hand of Midian." Gideon declines the 
office. But he reigns, notwithstanding, in all but regal 
state. His vast military mantle receives the spoils of the 
whole army. He combines, like David, the sacerdotal 
and the regal power. An image, clothed with a sacred 
ephod, is made of the Midianite spoils, and his house at 
Ophrah becomes a sanctuary, and he apparently is known 
even to the Phoenicians as a priest. He adopts, like 
David, the unhappy accompaniment of royalty, poly- 
gamy, with its unhappy consequences. It is evident 
that we have reached the climax of the period. We feel 
"all the goodness" of Gideon. There is a sweetness 
and nobleness, blended with his courage, such as lifts us 



214 MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



into a higher region ; something of the past greatness of 
Joshua, something of the future grace of David. But he 
was, as we should say, before his age. The attempt to 
establish a more settled form of government ended m 
disaster and crime. He himself remains as a character 
apart, faintly understood by others, imperfectly fulfilling his 
own ideas, staggering under a burden to which he was not 
equal. In his union of superstition and true religion, in 
his mysterious loneliness of situation, he recalls to us one 
of the greatest characters of heathen history, with the addi- 
tional interest of the high sacred element. "His mind rose 
above the state of things and men;" so we may apply to 
him what was said of Scipio Africanus — " his spirit was 
solitary and kingly ; he was cramped by living amongst 
those as his equals, whom he felt fitted to guide as from 
a higher sphere, and he retired to his native" Ophrah 
to " breathe freely, since he could not fulfil his natural 
calling to be a hero-king." 

Jewish Church, i,, p. 344. 



PLAGUES OF UZZIAH'S REIGN. 



TN the prosperity of the reign of Uzziah there were 
1 some dark spots, of which the Historical Books report 
hardly anything, but of which the writings of the con- 
temporary Prophets are full, and which led the way to 
the rapid decline of the next period. There was the 
tremendous, ever memorable visitation of locusts. It 
came, like all such visitations, in the season of unusual 
drought, a drought which passed over the country like 
flames of fire. The locusts came from the north. The 
brightness of the Eastern sky was suddenly darkened as 
if by thick clouds on the mountain tops. They moved like 
a gigantic army; "they all seemed to be impelled by 
one mind, as if acting under one word of command 
they flew as if on horses and chariots from hill to 
hill; never breaking their ranks, they climbed over 



2l6 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



the walls of cities, into the windows of houses. The 
purple vine, the green fig-tree, the grey olive, the 
scarlet pomegranate, the golden corn, the waving palm, 
the fragrant citron, vanished before them, and the 
trunks and branches were left bare and white by their 
devouring teeth. What had been but a few moments 
before like the garden of Eden was turned into a desolate 
wilderness (Joel i. 12, 18). The herds of cattle and 
flocks of sheep so dear to the shepherds of Judah, the 
husbandmen so dear to King Uzziah were reduced to star- 
vation. The flour and oil for the " meat offerings " failed ; 
even the Temple lost its accustomed sacrifices. It was 
a calamity so great that it seemed as though none could 
be greater. It " had not been in their days, nor in the 
days of their fathers;" "there had never been the like, 
neither would there be any more after it, even to the 
years of many generations." 

It must have been in the kingdom of Judah what the 
drought of Ahab's reign had been in the kingdom of 
Israel. It was a day of Divine judgment, a day of 
darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and thick 
darkness. The harsh blast of the consecrated ram's horn 
called an assembly for an extraordinary fast (Joel ii. 1). 
Not a soul was to be absent. Like the fiery cross, it 
convened old and young, men and women, mothers with 
infants at their breast, the bridegroom and the bride on 



PLAGUES OF UZZIAH'S REIGN. 



217 



their bridal day. All were there stretched in front of the 
altar The altar itself presented the dreariest of all 
sights, a hearth without its sacred fire, a table spread 
without its sacred feast. The Priestly caste, instead of 
gathering as usual upon its steps and its platform, were 
driven, as it were, to the further space; they turned then 
backs to the dead altar, and lay prostrate gazing towards 
the Invisible Presence within the sanctuary. Instead of 
the hymns and music which, since the time of David, had 
entered into their prayers, there was nothing heard but 
the passionate sobs, and the loud dissonant howls such 
as only an Eastern hierarchy could utter. Instead of 
the mass of white mantles, which they usually presented, 
they were wrapt in black goat's hair sackcloth, twisted 
round them not with the brilliant sashes of the priestly 
attire, but with a rough girdle of the same texture which 
they never unbound night or day (Joel i. 13)- What 
they wore of their common dress was rent asunder or 
cast off. With bare breasts they waved their black 
drapery towards the temple, and shrieked aloud, " Spare 
thy people, O Lord!" 

There was yet another calamity which left a deeper 
impression on the contemporary writers and on later 
tradition— "The Earthquake," as it was emphatically 
called (Amos i. 1). The whole Prophetic imagery of the 
time is coloured by the anticipations or recollections of 



218 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



this memorable event. Mountains and valleys are cleft 
asunder, and melt as in a furnace (Micah i. 4) ; the 
earth heaving like the rising waters of the Nile ; the sea 
bursting over the land ; the ground shaking and sliding, 
as, with a succession of shocks, its solid framework reels 
to and fro like a diunkard. The day is overclouded by 
thick darkness, without a glimmering of light. There is the 
roar as of a lion from the caverns of Jerusalem. There 
is an overthrow like that which overthrew the cities of 
the plain (Zech. xiv. 5, 6). 

It was on some high national solemnity that Uzziah 
— elated, according to the Chronicler, by his successes, 
but certainly in conformity with the precedents of 
David and Solomon — entered the Temple, clothed, ac- 
cording to Josephus, in priestly attire, with the inten- 
tion of offering incense on the golden altar within the 
sacred building. Whether it was that, in the changes 
that had elapsed since the reign of Solomon, the custom 
had dropped, or whether Uzziah entered upon it in a 
haughty and irritating spirit, or whether the priestly order, 
since their accession of power through the influence 
of Jehoiada, claimed more than their predecessors had 
claimed in former times, it is said that the High Priest 
Azariah, with eighty colleagues, positively forbade the 
King's entrance, on the ground that this was a privilege 
peculiar to the Priestly office (2 Chron. xxvi. 16). At this 



PLAGUES OF UZZIAH'S REIGN. 



219 



moment, according to Josephus, the shock of the earth- 
quake broke upon the city. Its more distant effects were 
visible long afterward, A huge mass of the mountain 
on the south-east of Jerusalem rolled down to the 
spring of Enrogel, and blocked up the approaches of 
the valley of the Kedron and the royal gardens. Its im- 
mediate effect, if rightly reported, was still more striking. 
As has happened in like calamities, even in Jerusalem 
itself the solid building of the Temple rocked, its roof 
opened, the darkness of its inner recess was suddenly 
lighted up by the full blaze of the sun j and as the King 
looked up towards it, a leprous disfigurement mounted 
into his face, and rendered necessary that exclusion, which 
on the ground of his royal descent, had been doubtful. 
He retired at once from the Temple-never again to 
enter it-and for the remainder of his life, as one of the 
accursed race, remained secluded within the public in- 
firmary. His grave was apart from the public vaults, 
in the adjacent field. 

Jewish Church, 1:., p. 43°- 



INVASION OF SENNACHERIB. 



NEW king was on the throne of Nineveh, whose 



name is the first that can be clearly identified in the 
Hebrew, Assyrian, and Grecian annals — Sennacherib. His 
grandeur is attested not merely by the details of the cunei- 
form inscriptions, but by the splendour of the palace, 
which, with its magnificent entrances and chambers, occu- 
pies a quarter of Nineveh, and by the allusions to his 
conquests in all the fragments of ancient history that con- 
tain any memorial of those times. With a pride of style 
peculiar to himself, he claims the titles of "the great, the 
powerful king, the King of the Assyrians, of the nations, 
of the four regions, the diligent ruler, the favourite of the 
great gods, the observer of sworn faith, the guardian of 
law, the establisher of monuments, the noble hero, the 
strong warrior, the first of kings, the punisher of unbe- 
lievers, the destroyer of wicked men." 




INVASION OF SENNACHERIB. 



221 



Such was the King who for many years filled the horizon 
of the Jewish world. He entered from the north. His 
chariots were seen winding through the difficult passes of 
Lebanon. He climbed to the lofty " heights," to the 
highest caravanserai of those venerable mountains. He 
passed along the banks of the streams which he drained 
by his armies, or over which he threw bridges for them to 
cross. It was his boast that he had penetrated even to 
the very sanctuary of Lebanon, where, on its extreme 
border, was the mysterious " park " or " garden " of the 
sacred cedars. He was renowned far and wide as their 
great destroyer. Inscriptions in his Assyrian palace record 
with pride that the wood with which it was adorned came 
from Lebanon. He was himself regarded as the Cedar of 
cedars (Isa. x. 3 4>- They shrieked aloud -so it seemed 
to the ear of the wakeful Prophets of the time— as they 
felt the fire at their roots, and saw the fall of their com- 
rades. They raised a shout of j oy when the tidings reached 
them that he was fallen. He descended by the romantic 
gorge of the river of the Wolf. His figure is still to be 
seen there carved on the rock, side by side with the me- 
morials of the two greatest empires of the world before 
and after him-the Egyptian Rameses who had preceded 
him by a thousand years, and the Emperor Antoninus 
who by a thousand years succeeded him. From Arvad 

or Sidon he must have embarked for Cilicia, with a view 



222 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



to occupy the Phoenician island of Cyprus ; and there 
took place the first encounter between the Greeks and the 
Asiatics. 

The main object of Sennacherib was not Palestine, but 
Egypt, the only rival worthy of his arms. To have dried 
up the canals of the Nile was the climax of his ambition. 
It was as the outposts of Egypt that the fortresses of 
southern Palestine stood in the way of his great designs. 
Already Sargon, his predecessor, had sent his general 
against the strong Philistine city of Ashdod, then governed 
by an independent king. Sennacherib now followed his 
father's example. His immediate object was Lachish, as 
Sargon's had been Ashdod. But it would have been use- 
less to occupy any Philistine city whilst the strong fortress 
of Jerusalem remained in the rear. 

It is this which brings him and his army within the view 
of the Sacred History. All intervening obstacles, north, 
and east, and west, had been swept away. Monarchies 
had perished, of ancient renown, but whose names alone 
have survived this devastation ; the king of Hamath, and 
the king of Arphad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, 
Hena, and Ivah. Calno had become as Carchemish, 
and Hamath as Arphad; there was not one of them left 
to tell their story. Damascus was a heap of ruins. 
The fortress of Ephraim had ceased. Tyre had been 
attacked, and greatly weakened. The desolations of Moab 



INVASION OF SENNACHERIB. 



223 



had roused once more the Prophetic dirge. The wild 
Arabs of Dumah asked fearfully of the night of the future. 
The caravans of the Dedanites fled from the sword and 
bow of the conqueror. The glory of Kedar failed before 
him. Even in western nations Sennacherib was known 
as King of the Arabs. Philistia, which had for a moment 
rejoiced in her rival's danger, shrieked in terror as she 
saw the column of smoke advancing from the north, 
and sought for help from her ancient foe, 

Each stage of the march of the army into Judsea was 
foreseen. He was first expected at Aiath. (That this 
march of Sennacherib was not actual but ideal appears 
from the account of his approach by Lachish.) There 
was the renowned defile of Michmash — the Rubicon, as 
it seemed, of the sacred territory — the precipitous pass, 
on the edge of which he would pause for a moment with 
his vast array of military baggage. They would pass over 
and spend their first night at Geba. The next morning 
would dawn upon a terror-stricken neighbourhood. Each 
one of those Benjamite fortresses, on the top of its crested 
hill, or down in its deep ravine, seems ready to leave its 
rooted base and fly away, — Ramah, Gibeah, Michmash, 
Geba — and the cries of Gallim and Laish are reverberated 
by Anathoth, the village of echoes. It is a short march 
to Jerusalem, and the evening will find him at Nob, the 
old sanctuary on the northern corner of Olivet, within 



224 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



sight of the Holy City. "He shall shake his hand 
against the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of 
Jerusalem." 

It was as if the great rivers of Mesopotamia — the sea- 
like rivers, as they seemed to the Israelites — had burst 
their bounds, and were sweeping away nation after nation 
in their irresistible advance. From a distance the sound 
of their approach had been as the roaring of wild beasts, 
as the roaring of the sea. " The multitudes of many 
people, a rushing of nations, like the rushing of mighty 
waters." And now these waves upon waves had passed 
over into Judah, and overflowed " and gone over," and 
seemed to " have filled the sacred land," to be dashing 
against the very rock of Zion itself. Out of these mighty 
waters the little kingdom alone stood uncovered. Nothing 
else was in sight. The fenced cities of Judah were taken — 
Zion alone remained. The desolation was as if the country 
had been held up like a bowl, and its inhabitants shaken 
out of it. It was even regarded as the first act of the 
captivity of Judah. 

Up to this point Hezekiah had been firm in maintaining 
the independence of his country. But now even he gave 
way. The show of resistance which he had assumed on 
the death of Sargon he could sustain no longer. He paid 
the tribute required. The gold with which he had covered 
the cedar gates and the brazen pillars of the Temple, he 



225 



stripped off to propitiate the invader. Peace was con- 
cluded. Both at Nineveh and Jerusalem we are able to 
read the effects. At Nineveh, if we may trust the in- 
scriptions, Sennacherib spoke as follows : — " And because 
Hezekiah, king of Judah, would not submit to my yoke, 
I came up against him, and by force of arms, and by the 
might of my power, I took forty-six of his strong fenced 
cities, and of smaller towns which were scattered about, 
I took and plundered a countless number. And from 
those places I captured and carried off as spoil, 200,150 
people, old and young, male and female together, with 
horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, 
a countless multitude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up 
in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, build- 
ing towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks 

of earth against the gates to prevent his escape 

Then upon this Hezekiah there fell the fear of the power 
of my arms, and he sent out to me the chiefs and the elders 
of Jerusalem, with thirty talents of gold, and eight hundred 
talents of silver, and divers treasures, and rich and immense 

booty All these things were brought to me at 

Nineveh, the seat of my government, Hezekiah having 
sent them by way of tribute, and as a token of his sub- 
mission to my power." 

In Jerusalem there was a strange reaction of policy. 
The invading army passed in long defile under the walls of 

Q 



226 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



the city. It was composed chiefly of two auxiliary forces- 
one, the Syrians of Damascus, distinguished as of old by 
their shields ; the other— a name here first mentioned in 
the Sacred History— El am' or Persia, with the archers for 
which it was famous throughout the ancient world. The 
chariots and horses, in which both Syria and Assyria ex- 
celled, filled the ravines underneath the walls. The horse- 
men rode up to the gates. Their scarlet dresses and 
scarlet shields blazed in the sun (Isa. ix. 5.) The veil 
of the city was, as it were, torn away. The glorious front 
of Solomon's cedar palace, and the rents in the walls of 
Zion, were seen by the foreigners. 

But instead of regarding this as a day of humiliation, 
" a day of trouble, and treading down, and perplexity," 
(Isa. xxii. 5,) the whole city was astir with joy at this 
deliverance through their unworthy submission. The 
people crowded to the flat tops of the houses, in idle 
curiosity, to see the troops pass by : instead of " weeping 
and mourning, and cutting off the hair, and sackcloth," 
there was joy and gladness, slaying of oxen and killing 
of sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. Whatever evil 
might be in store, they were satisfied to live for a day. 
" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Isaiah 
was there, and looked on with unutterable grief. " Look 
away from me, I will weep bitterly. Labour not to com- 
fort me. ' In the midst of the revelry, an awful voice 



INVASION OF SENNACHERIB. 



227 



sounded in his ears, that this was an iniquity which could 

never be forgiven on this side of the grave 

As soon as the immediate danger was removed, Heze- 
kiah took courage, and again raised the standard of inde- 
pendence. An embassy had arrived from the powerful 
Egyptian king Tirhakah, in his distant land of Ethiopia, 
with promises of assistance. The Philistines w T ho occupied 
the frontier between Judah and Egypt, had been subdued 
by Hezekiah, apparently with a view to this very alliance. 
On the hope of gaining the chariots and horses, which 
constituted the main forces of Egypt, the king and people 
buoyed themselves up. All across the perilous desert 
gifts were sent on troops of asses and camels to propitiate 
the great ally. 

But it was an alliance fraught with danger to the 
Jewish commonwealth. The policy of the Egyptian kings 
would have been to use the war-like little state as an 
outpost to sustain the first shock of the enemy before he 
entered the Delta. Their " strength was to sit still " and 
sacrifice their weaker neighbour. The tall reed of the 
Nile-bulrush would only pierce the hand of him who 
leaned on it. Isaiah began the course of protests against 
the alliance, which was taken up by all the subsequent 
prophets. Hezekiah responded to the call. By a sus- 
tained effort — which gave him a peculiar renown as a 
second founder or restorer of the city of David — he 

Q 2 



228 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



stopped the two springs of Siloam, and diverted the 
waters of the Kedron, which, unlike its present dry state, 
and unusually even for that time, had been flooding its 
banks; and in this way the besiegers, as he hoped, would 
be cut off from all water on the barren hills around. He 
also fortified the walls, and rebuilt the towers, which had 
probably not been repaired on the north-side, since the as- 
sault of Joash king of Israel, and completed the armoury 
and outworks of the castle or fortress of Millo. He assem- 
bled the people in the great square or open place before the 
city gate, and there, with his officers, nobles, and guards, 
addressed the people, in a spirit which, combined with 
his active preparations, reminds us of the like combina- 
tion in the well-known speech of Cromwell. " And the 
people rested on the words of Hezekiah king of Judah." 
Well might any nation repose on one to whom even now 
the world may turn, as a signal example of what is meant 
by Faith, as distinct from Fanaticism. 

The intelligence of these preparations reached Senna- 
cherib as he was encamped before Lachish, seated in 
state, as we see him in the monuments, on his sculptured 
throne, his bow and arrows in his hand, his chariots and 
horses of regal pomp behind him ; the prisoners bending 
before him, half-clothed and bare-foot, from the captured 
city. From this proud position he sent a large detach- 
ment to Jerusalem, headed by the "Tartan," or "General " 



INVASION OF SENNACHERIB. 



229 



of the host. They took up their position on the north 
of the city, on a spot long afterwards known as " the 
camp of the Assyrians." The general, accompanied by 
two high personages, known like himself through their 
official titles, " the Head of the Cupbearers," and " Head 
of the Eunuchs," approached the walls, and came to the 
same spot where, many years before, Isaiah had met 
Ahaz. Hezekiah feared to appear. In his place came 
Eliakim, now chief minister, Shebna now in the office 
of secretary, and Joah the royal historian. The Chief 
Cupbearer was the spokesman. He spoke in Hebrew. 
The Jewish chiefs entreated him to speak in his own 
Aramaic. But his purpose was directly to address the 
spectators, as they sate on the houses along the city 
wall, and his speech breathes the spirit which pervades 
all the representations of Assyrian power. That grave 
majestic physiognomy, that secure reliance on the pro- 
tecting genius under whose wings the king stands on his 
throne or in his chariot, finds its exact counterpart in the 
lofty irony, the inflexible sternness, the calm appeal to a 
superhuman wisdom and grandeur, the confidence, as in 
a Divine Mission to sweep away the religions of all the 
surrounding countries, which we read in the defiance of 
the Rab-Shakeh and of the great King himself. 

The defiance was received by the people in dead 
silence. The three ministers tore their garments in 



230 MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



horror, and appeared in that state before the King. He, 
too, gave way to the same uncontrolled burst of grief. 
He and they both dressed themselves in sackcloth, and 
the King took refuge in the Temple. The ministers went 
to seek comfort from Isaiah. The insulting embassy 
returned to Sennacherib. The army was moved from 
Lachish, and lay in front of the fortress of Libnah. A 
letter couched in terms like those already used by his 
envoys, was sent direct from the King of Assyria to the 
King of Judah. What would be their fate if they were 
taken, they might know from the fate of Lachish, which 
we still see on the sculptured monuments, where the 
inhabitants are lying before the King stripped in order 
to be flayed alive. Hezekiah took the letter and pene- 
trating, as it would seem, into the most Holy Place, laid 
it before the Divine Presence enthroned above the 
cherubs, and called upon Him whose name it insulted, to 
look down and see with His own eyes the outrage that was 
offered to Him. From that dark recess no direct answer 
was vouchsafed. The answer came through the mouth 
of Isaiah. From the first moment that Sennacherib's 
army had appeared, he had held the same language of 
unbroken hope and confidence, clothed in every variety 
of imagery. At one time it was the rock of Zion amidst 
the raging flood. At another, it was the lion of Judah, 
roaring fiercely for his prey, undismayed by the multi- 



INVASION OF SENNACHERIB. 



231 



tude of rustic shepherds gathered round to frighten him 
(Isa. xxxi. 4). At another, it is the everlasting wings of 
the Divine protection, like those of a parent bird brood- 
ing over her young against the great Birdsnester of 
the world, whose hand is in every nest, gathering every 
egg that is left, till no pinion should be left to nutter, 
no beak left to chirp (Isa. x. 14). Or, again, it is the 
mighty cedar of Lebanon, with its canopy of feathering 
branches, which yet shall be hewn down with a crash 
that shall make the nations shake at the sound of his 
fall; whilst the tender branch and green shoot shall 
spring up out of the dry and withered stump of the tree 
of Jesse, which shall take root downward and bear fruit 
upward. Or, again, it is the contest between the Virgin 
Queen, the impregnable daughter of Zion, sitting on her 
mountain fastness, shaking her head in noble scorn, and 
the savage monster, the winged bull, which had come 
up against her, led captive, with a ring in his nostrils, 
and a bridle in his lips, to turn him back by the way 
by which he came (Isa. xxxvii. 29). At times he speaks 
plainly and without a figure. "Where is the scribe? 
where the receivers ? where is he that counted the towers ? 
Behold, in the morning he is, and in the evening he is 
not. He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow 
there, nor come before it with shields, nor cast up a bank 
against it." 



232 MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



It was a day of awful suspense. In proportion to 
the strength of Isaiah's confidence and of Hezekiah's 
devotion, would have been the ruin of the Jewish Church 
and faith, if they had been disappointed of their hope. 
It was a day of suspense also for the two great armies 
which were drawing near to their encounter on the con- 
fines of Palestine. Like Anianus in the siege of Orleans, 
Hezekiah must have looked southward and westward 
with ever keener and keener eagerness. For already 
there was a rumour that Tirhakah, the King of Egypt, was 
on his way to the rescue. Already Sennacherib had 
heard the rumour, and it was this which precipitated his 
endeavour to intimidate Jerusalem into submission. 

The evening closed in on what seemed to be the 
devoted city. The morning dawned, and with the morn- 
ing came the tidings from the camp at Libnah, that 
they were delivered. " Una nox interfuit inter maximum 
exercitum et nullum." " It came to pass that night, that 
the angel of Jehovah went forth, and smote in the camp 
of the Assyrians a hundred and. fourscore and five thou- 
sand " (2 Kings xix. 35). 

By whatever mode accomplished — whether by plague 
or tempest; or on whatever scene, whether, as seems 
implied by the Jewish account, at Lachish, or, by the 
Egyptian account, at Pelusium — the deliverance itself 
was complete and final. The Assyrian king at once re- 



INVASION 



turned, and, according to the Jewish tradition, wreaked 
his vengeance on the Israelite exiles whom he found in 
Mesopotamia. He was the last of the great Assyrian 
conquerors. No Assyrian host again ever crossed the 
Jordan. Within a few years from that time the Assyrian 
power suddenly vanished from the earth. 

The effect of the event must have been immense, in 
proportion to the strain of expectation and apprehension 
that had preceded it. Isaiah had staked upon his pro- 
phetic word the existence of his country, his own and his 
people's faith in God. So literally had that word been 
fulfilled that he was himself, in after times, regarded as 
the instrument of the deliverance. (Ecclus. xlviii. 20, 
" Delivered them by the ministry of Esay.") There is no 
direct expression of his triumph at the moment, but it is 
possible that we have his hymn of thanksgiving when he 
afterwards heard of the world-renowned murder which 
struck down the mighty King in the temple of Nineveh. 
The earth again breathes freely. The sacred cedar-grove 
feels itself once more secure. The world of shades, the 
sepulchre of kings, prepares to receive its new inmate. 

"Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become as one 
of us? 

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning ! 
How art thou cut down to the earth, that didst weaken the 
nations ! 

Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake 

kingdoms ? 



234 



MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



That made the earth as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities 
thereof? 

All the kings of the nations, all of them rest in glory, each one in 
his house ; 

But thou art cast out from thy grave like an abominable branch." 

If there is any doubt as to the Prophet's utterance, 
there is none as to the burst of national thanksgiving 
as incorporated in the Book of Psalms, when, at the close 
of that night, " God's help appeared as the morning 
broke." The rock of Zion had remained immovable, 
deriving only life and freshness from the deluge of the 
mighty river which had swept the surrounding kingdoms 
into the sea. The Prophetic pledge of the name of 
Immanuel was redeemed. Again and again the Psalmist 
repeats, "God is our refuge;" "God is in the midst of her;" 
" The Lord of hosts is with us." " The God of Jacob, 
the God of Jacob, is our refuge ; 3 " " In Salem is His leafy 
covert, and His rocky den in Zion." The weapons of the 
great army, such as we see them in the Assyrian monu- 
ments — the mighty bow and its lightning arrows, the 
serried shields — were shattered to pieces. The long 
array of dead horses, the chariots now useless left to be 
burnt, the spoils carried off from the dead, all rise to 
view in the recollection of that night. The proud have 
slept their sleep, and the mighty soldiers fling out their 
hands in vain. The arms have fallen from their grasp. 
The neigh of the charger, the rattle of the chariot, are 



INVASION OF SENNACHERIB. 



235 



alike hushed in the sleep of death. The wild uproar is 
over, the whole world is silent, and in that awful stillness 
the Israelites descend from the heights of Jerusalem, like 
their ancestors to the shores of the Red Sea, to see the 
desolation that had been brought on the earth. As then, 
they carried away the spoils as trophies. The towers of 
Jerusalem were brilliant with the shields of the dead. 
The fame of the fall of Sennacherib's host struck the 
surrounding nations with terror far and wide. It was 
like the knell of the great potentates of the world ; and 
in their fall the God of Israel seemed to rise to a higher 
and yet higher exaltation. 

The importance of the deliverance was not confined 
to the country, or the times of Hezekiah. From the 
surrounding tribes tribute poured in as to an awful 
Avenger. One such monument long remained in Egypt. 
Tirhakah, with his advancing army from the south, no 
less than Hezekiah on the watch-towers of Jerusalem, 
heard the tidings with joy; and, three centuries after- 
wards, the Psalmist's exulting cry, that an Invisible power 
had " broken the arrows of the bow, the shield, the sword, 
and the battle," was repeated in other language, but with 
the same meaning, by Egyptian priests, who told to 
Grecian travellers how Sennacherib's army had been 
attacked by mice, which devoured the quivers, the 
arrows, the bows, the handles of the shields, 



236 MEMORABLE SCRIPTURE EVENTS. 



In connection with the Jewish history, the fall of Sen- 
nacherib has at once a more special and a more extensive 
significance. It is the confirmation of Isaiah's doctrine 
of the remnant, the pledge of success to the few against 
the many. " Be strong and courageous, be not afraid or 
dismayed of the King of Assyria, nor for all the multitude 
that is with him : for there be more with us than with him : 
with him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord God, 
to help us and to fight our battles." Nor did the echoes 
of the catastrophe cease with its own time. The Mac- 
cabees were sustained by the recollection of it in their 
struggles against Antiochus. It is not without reason 
that in the churches of Moscow the exultation over the 
fall of Sennacherib is still read on the anniversary of the 
retreat of the French from Russia; or that Arnold, in 
his Lectures on Modern History, in the impressive pas- 
sage in which he dwells on that great catastrophe, de- 
clared that for " the memorable night of frost in which 
20,000 horses perished, and the strength of the French 
army was utterly broken," he "knew of no language so 
well fitted to describe it as the words in which Isaiah 
described the advance and destruction of the host of 
Sennacherib." The grandeur of the deliverance has pas- 
sed into the likeness of all sudden national escapes. 

Jewish Church, ii. p. 469. 



SACRED SCENES. 



APPROACH TO PALESTINE. 



JT was at 'Akaba that one of our Arabs, stretching out 
his hands in prayer, after a few moments of silence, 
exclaimed, pointing over the palm trees, " There is the 
new moon," — the new moon which gave me a thrill no 
new moon had ever awakened before, for, if all prospered, 
its fulness would be that of the Paschal moon at Jeru- 
salem. At 'Akaba, too, we first came within the dominions 
of David and Solomon. And now we were already on 
the confines of the tribe of Judah, and the next day we 
crossed the difficult high pass of Safeh, thought to be 
that through which the Israelites were repulsed by the 
Amorites. Unfortunately a thick haze hung over the 
mountains of Edom, so that we saw them no more again. 
It was on Palm Sunday that we descended on the other 
side, and from this time the approach to Palestine fairly 



240 



SACRED SCENES. 



began. How the name of Aaron rang with a new sound 
in the first and second lessons of that evening after the 
sight of Mount Hor !....., 

The Approach to Palestine — nothing can be more 
gradual. There is no special point at which you can say 
the Desert is ended and the Land of Promise is begun. 
Yet there is an interest in that solemn and peaceful 
melting away of one into the other which I cannot 
describe. It was like the striking passage in Thalaba, 
describing the descent of the mountains, with the suc- 
cessive beginnings of vegetation and warmth. The first 
change was perhaps what one would least expect — the 
disappearance of trees. The last palms were those we 
left at 'Ain el-Weibeh. Palm Sunday was the day 
which shut us out, I believe, with very few exceptions, 
from those beautiful creations of the Nile and the 
Desert springs. The next day we saw the last of our 
well-known Acacia — that consecrated and venerable tree 
of the Burning Bush and of the Tabernacle ; and then, 
for the first time in the whole journey, we had to 
take our mid-day meal without shade. But meanwhile 
every other sign of life was astir. On descending 
from the Pass of Safeh, one observed that the little 
shrubs, which had more or less sprinkled the whole 
'Arabah, were more thickly studded; the next day 
they gave a gray covering to the whole hill side, and 



APPROACH TO PALESTINE. 



24I 



the little tufts of grass threw in a general tint of green 
before unknown. Then the red anenomes of Petra 
reappeared, and then here and there patches of com. 
As we advanced, this thin covering became deeper and 
fuller ; and daisies and hyacinths were mixed with the 
blood-drops of the anenomes. (It is these which are 
called the " Blood-drops of Christ"). — Signs of ancient 
habitations appeared in the ruins of forts, and remains on 
the hill sides; wells, too, deeply built with marble casings 
round their mouths, worn by the ropes of ages. East 
and west, under a long line of hills which bounded it to 
the north, ran a wide plain in which verdure, though not 
universal, was still predominant. Up this line of hills 
our next day's course took us, and still the marks of 
ruins increased on the hill tops, and long courses of 
venerable rock or stone, the boundaries, or roads, or 
both, of ancient inhabitants ; and the anenomes ran like 
fire through the mountain glens ; and deep glades of corn, 
green and delicious to the eye, spread right and left 
before us. 

Most striking anywhere would have been this pro- 
tracted approach to land after that wide desert sea— 
these seeds and plants, and planks, as it were, drifting to 
meet us. But how doubly striking when one felt in one's 
inmost soul, that this was the entrance into the Holy 
Land.— "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed 

R 



242 SACRED SCENES. 



garments from Bozra?" Everything told us that we were 
approaching the sacred frontier. In that solitary nde- 
for all desert rides are more or less solitary-through 
this peaceful passing away of death into life, there 
was indeed no profanation of the first days of Passion 
Week. That wide plain of which I spoke, with its rums 
and wells, was the wilderness of Beersheba: with wells 
such as those for which Abraham and Isaac struggled; 
at which, it may be, they had watered their flocks. That 
long line of hills was the beginning of " the hill country 
ofJuda?a,"and when we began to ascend it, the first 
answer to our inquiries after the route told that it was 
"Carmel," not the more famous mountain of that name, 
but that on which Nabal fed his flocks ; and close below 
its long ranges was the hill and ruin of "Ziph ;" close 
above, the hill of " Maon." That is to say, we were now 
in the heart of the wild country where David wandered 
from Saul like those very << partridges in the mountains," 

which we saw abounding in all directions 

From these heights, by gradual ascent and descent we 
went on. With Ziph the more desolate region ended. 
The valleys now began, at least in our eyes, almost liter- 
ally to "laugh and sing." Greener and greener did they 
grow-the shrubs, too, shot up above that stunted growth. 
\t last on the summits of further hills, lines of spreading 
trees appeared against the sky. Then came ploughed 



APPROACH TO PALESTINE. 



243 



fields and oxen. Lastly, a deep recess opened in the 
hills — towers and minarets appeared through the gap, 
which gradually unfolded into the city of " the Friend of 
God " — this is its Arabic name : far up on the right ran 
a wide and beautiful upland valley, all partitioned into 
gardens and fields, green fig-trees and cherry-trees, and 
the vineyards — famous through all ages : and far off, gray 
and beautiful as those of Tivoli, swept down the western 
slope the olive groves of Hebron. Most startling of all 
was the hum through the air— hitherto " that silent air " 
which I described during our first encampment, but which 
had grown familiar as the sounds of London to those 
who live constantly within their range — the hum, at first, 
of isolated human voices and the lowing of cattle, rising 
up from these various orchards and corn-fields, and then 
a sound, which to our ears, seemed like that of a mighty 
multitude, but which was only the united murmur of the 
population of the little town which we now entered at its 
southern end. They had come out to look at some 
troops going off to capture a refractory chief, and they 
still remained sitting on the mounds— old men, women 
and children, in their various dresses, which, after the 
monotonous brown rags of the Bedouins, looked gay and 
bright— sitting, with their hands shading their faces from 
the rays of the afternoon sun, to see the long passage of 
the caravan, guarded on each side by the officers of the 

r 2 



244 



SACRED SCENES. 



, Quarantine. High above us on the eastern height of the 
town __ w hich lies nestled, Italian-like, on the slope of a 
rav i n e— rose the long black walls and two stately minarets 
of that illustrious mosque, one of the four sanctuaries 
of the Mahometan world, sacred in the eyes of all the 
world besides, which covers the Cave of Machpelah, 
the last resting-place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 
We passed on by one of those two ancient reservoirs, 
where King David hanged the murderers of his rival, up 
a slope of grass, broken only by tombs and flocks of 
sheep, to the high gates of the Quarantine, which closed 
upon us, and where we are now imprisoned for the next 
three days, but with that glorious view of Hebron before 
us night and dav. 

Sinai and Palestine, p. 98. 



JERUSALEM AND ITS ENVIRONS. 



T ERUSALEM is one of the few places where the first 
J impression is not the best. No doubt the first sight, 
the first moment, when from the ridge of hills which 
divide the valley of Rephaim from the valley of Bethlehem, 
one sees the white line crowning the horizon, and knows 
that it is Jerusalem — is a moment never to be forgotten. 
But there is nothing in the view itself to excite your feel- 
ings. Nor is there even when the Mount of Olives heaves 
in sight, nor when " the horses' roofs ring on the stones 
of the streets of Jerusalem." ...... 

In one respect no one need quarrel with this first aspect 
of Jerusalem. So far as localities have any concern with 
religion, it is well to feel that Christianity, even in its first 
origin, was nurtured in no romantic scenery j that the 
discourses in the walks to and from Bethany, and in earlier 



246 



SACRED SCENES. 



times the Psalms and Prophecies of David and Isaiah, 
were not as in Greece the offspring of oracular cliffs and 
grottoes, but the simple outpouring of souls which thought 
of nothing but God and man. It is not, however, incon- 
sistent with this view to add, that though not romantic — 
though at first sight bare and prosaic in the extreme — there 
does at last grow up about Jerusalem a beauty as poetical 
as that which hangs over Athens and Rome. First, it is 
in the highest degree venerable. Modern houses it is 
true there are, the interiors of the streets are modern ; 
the old city itself (and I felt a constant satisfaction in the 
thought) lies buried twenty, thirty, forty feet below these 
wretched shops and receptacles for Anglo-Oriental con- 
veniences. But still, as you look at it from any com- 
manding point, within or without the walls, you are struck 
by the gray ruinous masses of which it is made up ; it is 
the ruin, in fact, of the old Jerusalem on which you 
look — the stones, the columns — the very soil on which 
you tread is the accumulation of nearly three thousand 
years. And as with the city, so it is with the view of the 
country round it. There is, I have said, no beauty of 
form or outline, but there is nothing to disturb the thought 
of the hoary age of those ancient hills ; and the interest 
of the past, even to the hardest mind, will in spite of 

themselves invest them with a glory of their own 

But besides this imaginative interest there are real fea- 



JERUSALEM AND ITS ENVIRONS. 



247 



tures which would, even taken singly, be enough to re- 
deem the dullest of prospects. In the first place there 
is the view of the Moab mountains. I always knew that 
I should see them from Olivet, but I was not prepared for 
their constant mingling with the views of Jerusalem itself. 
From almost every point, there was visible that long purple 
wall, rising out of its unfathomable depths, to us even 
more interesting than to the old Jebusites or Israelites. 
They knew the tribes who lived there ; they had once 
dwelt there themselves. But to the inhabitants of modern 
Jerusalem, of whom comparatively few have ever visited 
the other side of the Jordan, it is the end of the world ; 
and to them, to us, these mountains have almost the effect 
of a distant view of the sea ; the hues constantly changing, 
this or that precipitous rock coming out clear in the morn- 
ing or evening shade — there, the form of what may pos- 
sibly be Pisgah, dimly shadowed out by surrounding 
valleys — here the point of Kerak, the capital of Moab, 
and fortress of the Crusaders — and then at times all wrapt 
in deep haze, the mountains overhanging the valley of the 
shadow of death, and all the more striking from their 
contrast with the gray or green colours of the hills and 
streets and walls through which you catch the glimpse of 
them. Next, there are the ravines of the city. This is 
its great charm, the two ravines of Hinnom and Jehosha- 
phat opening between you and the city ; and again the 



248 



SACRED SCENES. 



two lesser ravines, intersecting the city itself. And, thirdly, 
it must be remembered that there is one approach which 
is really grand, namely, from Jericho and Bethany. It is 
the approach by which the army of Pompey advanced, 
— the first European army that ever confronted it, — and it 
is the approach of the Triumphal Entry of the Gospels. 

Probably the first impression of every one coming from 
the north, the west, and the south, may be summed up in the 
simple expression used by one of the modern travellers, — 
" I am strangely affected, but greatly disappointed." But 
no human being could be disappointed who first saw 
Jerusalem from the east. The beauty consists in this, 
that you then burst at once on the two great ravines which 
cut the city off from the surrounding table-land, and that 
then only you have a complete view of the Mosque of 
Omar. The other buildings of Jerusalem which emerge 
from the mass of gray ruin and white stones are few, and 
for the most part unattractive. What, however, these fail 
to effect, is in one instant effected by a glance at the 
Mosque of Omar. From whatever point that graceful- 
dome with its beautiful precinct emerges to view, it at 
once dignifies the whole city. And when from Olivet, or 
from the governor's house, you see the platform on which 
it stands, it is a scene hardly to be surpassed. A dome 
graceful as that of St. Peter's, though of course on a far 
smaller scale, rising from an elaborately finished circular 



JERUSALEM AND ITS ENVIRONS. 



249 



edifice — this edifice raised on a square marble platform 
rising on the highest ridge of a green slope which descends 
from it north, south, and east to the walls surrounding the 
whole enclosure — platform and enclosure diversified by 
lesser domes and fountains, by cypresses, and olives, and 
planes, and palms — the whole as secluded and quiet as the 
interior of some college or cathedral garden, only en- 
livened by the white figures of veiled women stealing like 
ghosts up and down the green slope, or by the turbaned 
heads bowed low in the various niches for prayer — 
this is the Mosque of Omar : the Haram es-Sherif, " the 
noble sanctuary," the second most sacred spot in the 
Mahometan world, — that is, the next after Mecca; the 
second most beautiful Mosque, — that is, the next after 
Cordova. . . , » . 

Sinai and Palestine, p. 166, 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVET AND ITS 
MEMORIES. 



T ET us briefly go through the points which occur in 
the Sacred History, of the last days of Christ, 
during which alone He appears for any continuous period 
in Jerusalem and its neighbourhood. From Bethany we 
must begin. A wild mountain-hamlet, screened by an 
intervening ridge from the view of the top of Olivet, is 
perched on a broken plateau of rock, the last collection 
of human habitations before the desert-hills which reach 
to Jericho. High in the distance are the Persean Moun- 
tains ; the foreground is the deep descent to the Jordan 
valley. On the further side of that dark abyss Martha and 
Mary knew that Christ was abiding when they sent their 
messenger; up that long ascent He came when outside 
the village Martha and Mary met Him, and the Jews 
stood round weeping. 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVET AND ITS MEMORIES. 



251 



Up that same ascent He came, also, at the be- 
ginning of the week of His Passion. One night He 
halted in the village, as of old; the village and the 
Desert were then all alive, as they still are once every 
year at the Greek Easter, with the crowd of Paschal 
pilgrims moving to and fro between Bethany and Jeru- 
salem. In the morning, He set forth on His journey. 
Three pathways lead, and probably always led, from 

Bethany to Jerusalem Two vast streams of people 

met on that day. The one poured out from the city, 
and as they came through the gardens whose clusters of 
palm rose on the southern corner of Olivet, they cut 
down the long branches, as was their wont at the Feast 
of Tabernacles, and moved upwards towards Bethany, 
with loud shouts of welcome. From Bethany streamed 
forth the crowds who had assembled* there on the pre- 
vious night, and who came testifying to the great event 
at the sepulchre of Lazarus. The road soon loses sight 
of Bethany. It is now a rough, but still broad and well- 
defined mountain-track, winding over rock and loose 
stones ; a steep declivity below on the left ; the sloping 
shoulder of Olivet above on the right ; fig-trees below and 
above, here and there growing out of the rocky soil. 
Along the road the multitude threw down the branches 
which they cut as they went along, or spread out a rude 
matting formed of the palm branches they had already 



252 



SACRED SCENES. 



cut as they came out. The larger portion— those per- 
haps, who escorted Him from Bethany— unwrapped their 
loose cloaks from their shoulders, and stretched them 
along the rough path, to form a momentary carpet as 
He approached. The two streams met midway. Half 
of the vast mass, turning round, preceded ; the other half 
followed. Gradually the long procession swept up and 
over the ridge, where first begins "the ascent of the 
Mount of Olives " towards Jerusalem. At this point the 
first view is caught of the south-eastern corner of the 
city. It was at this precise point, " as He drew near, at 
the descent of the Mount of Olives "—may it not have 
been from the sight thus opening upon them?— that the 
shout of triumph burst from the multitude : " Hosanna 
to the Son of David I Blessed is He that cometh in the 
name of the Lord.' Blessed is the kingdom that cometh 
of our father David. Hosanna . . . peace . . . glory in the 
highest."* There was a pause as the shout ran through 
the long defile ; and as the Pharisees who stood by in 
the crowd complained, He pointed to the "stones" which, 
strewn beneath their feet, would immediately "cry out" if 
" these were to hold their peace." 
Again the procession advanced. The road descends 

* I have ventured to concentrate the expressions of Matt. xxi. 9, Mark xi, 9, 
John xii. 13, on the one precise point described by Luke xix. 37, "The whole 
multitude began to praise God with a loud voice." 



THE MOUNT OF OLIVET AND ITS MEMORIES. 253 



a slight declivity, and the glimpse of the city is again 
withdrawn behind the intervening ridge of Olivet. A 
few moments, and the path mounts again ; it climbs a 
rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and 
in an instant the whole city bursts into view. As 
now the dome of the mosque El-Aksa rises like a 
ghost from the earth before the traveller stands on 
the ledge, so then must have risen the Temple-tower • 
as now the vast enclosure of the Mussulman sanc- 
tuary, so then must have spread the Temple courts; 
as now the gray town on its broken hills, so then the 
magnificent city, with its back-ground — long since vanished 
awa y — of gardens and suburbs on the western plateau 
behind. Immediately below was the Valley of the 
Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth as it joins the 
Valley of Hinnom, and thus giving full effect to the great 
peculiarity of Jerusalem seen only on its eastern side — 
its situation as of a city rising out of a deep abyss. It 
is hardly possible to doubt that this rise and turn of the 
road, this rocky ledge, was the exact point where the 
multitude paused again, and He, " when He beheld the 
city, wept over it." Nowhere else on the Mount of 
Olives is there a view like this. 

It is hardly worth while to dwell on the spots else- 
where pointed out by tradition or probability on the 
rest of the mountain. It is enough to know that to the 



254 



SACRED SCENES. 



gardens and olive-yards which then, as now, but pro- 
bably with greater richness of foliage, and greater security 
of walls and watch-towers, — covered the slopes of 
the hill, He resorted, as His countrymen must always 
have resorted, for retirement and refreshment from 
the crowded streets of the city. On one of the 
rocky banks of the mountain, immediately "over 
against the Temple," He sate, and saw the sun go 
down over the city, and foretold its final doom. 
Bethany, on the further side, was the home to which he 
retired ; any of the fig-trees which spring out of the rocky 
soil on either side of the road, might be the one which 
bore no fruit. On the wild uplands which immediately 
overhang the village, He finally withdrew from the eyes 
of His disciples, in a seclusion which, perhaps, could no- 
where else be found so near the stir of a mighty city. 
At this point the last interview took place. " He led 
them out as far as Bethany," and " they returned," prob- 
ably by the direct read, "over the summit of Mount 
Olivet." 

Bible Dictionary , 



NATURAL MEMORIALS. 



qpHE geological structure of Palestine, as of Greece, is 
7 almost entirely limestone. This rocky character 
of the whole country has not been without its historical 
results. Not only does the thirsty character of the whole 
East give a peculiar expression to any places where water 
may be had, but the rocky soil preserves their identity, 
and the Wells of Palestine serve as the links by which 
each successive age is bound to the other, in a manner 
which at first sight would be thought almost incredible. 
The name by which they are called of itself indicates 
their permanent character. The "well" of the Hebrew 
and the Arab is carefully distinguished from the "spring." 
The " spring" is the bright open source — the " eye" of 
the landscape, such as bubbles up amongst the crags of 
Sinai, or rushes forth in a copious stream from En-gedi, 



256 



SACRED SCENES. 



or from Jericho. But the " well " is the deep hole borea 
far under the rocky surface by the art of man — the earliest 
traces of that art which these regions exhibit. By these 
orifices at the foot of the hills, surrounded by their broad 
margin of smooth stone or marble, a rough mass of stone 
covering the top, have always been gathered whatever 
signs of animation or civilization the neighbourhood 
afforded. They were the scenes of the earliest conten- 
tions of the shepherd-patriarchs with the inhabitants of 
the land ; the places of meeting with the women who 
came down to draw water from their rocky depths ; — of 
Eliezer with Rebekah, of Jacob with Rachel, of Moses 
with Zipporah, of Christ with the woman of Samaria. 
They were the natural halting-places of great caravans, or 
wayfaring men, as when Moses gathered together the 
people to the well of Moab, which the princes dug with 
their sceptred staves (Num. xxi. 16), and therefore the 
resort of the plunderers of the Desert — of " the noise oi 
archers in the places of drawing water." What they 
were ages ago in each of these respects they are still. 
The shepherds may still be seen leading their flocks of 
sheep and goats to their margin ; the women still come 
with their pitchers and talk to those who " sit by the 
well ; " the traveller still looks forward to it as his rest- 
ing-place for the night, if it be in a place of safety ; or, 
if it be in the neighbourhood of the wilder Bedouins, is 



NATURAL MEMORIALS. 



257 



hurried on by his dragoman or his escort without halting 
a moment ; and thus, by their means, not only is the 
image of the ancient life of the country preserved, but 
the scenes of sacred events are identified, which under 
any other circumstances would have perished. The 
wells of Beersheba in the wide frontier-valley of Pales- 
tine are indisputable witnesses of the life of Abraham. 
The well of Jacob, at Shechem, is a monument of the 
earliest and of the latest events of sacred history, of the 
caution of the prudent patriarch, no less than of the 

freedom of the Gospel there proclaimed by Christ 

Next to the wells of Syria, the most authentic memorials 
of past times are the Sepulchres, and partly for the same 
reason. 

The tombs of ancient Greece and Rome lined the 
public roads with funeral pillars or towers. Grassy 
graves and marble monuments fill the churchyards and 
churches of Christian Europe. But the sepulchres of 
Palestine were, like the habitations of its earliest inhabi- 
tants, hewn out of the living limestone rock, and there- 
fore indestructible as the rock itself. In this respect 
they resembled, though on a smaller scale, the tombs of 
Upper Egypt ; and as there the traveller of the nine- 
teenth century is confronted with the names and records 
of men who lived thousands of years ago, so also, in the 
excavations of the valleys which surround or approach 

s 



SACRED SCENES. 



Shiloh, Shechem, Bethel, and Jerusalem, he knows that 
he sees what were the last resting-places of the genera- 
tions contemporary with Joshua, Samuel, and David. 

The rocky cave on Mount Hor must be at least 
the spot believed by Josephus to mark the grave 
of Aaron. The tomb of Joseph must be near one of 
the two monuments pointed out as such in the open- 
ing of the vale of Shechem. The sepulchre which is 
called the tomb of Rachel exactly agrees with the spot 
described as "a little way" from Bethlehem. The 
tomb of David, which was known with certainty at 
the time of the Christian era, may perhaps still be found 
under the mosque which bears his name on the modern 
Zion. Above all, the cave of Machpelah is concealed, 
beyond all reasonable doubt, by the mosque at Hebron. 
But, with these exceptions, we must rest satisfied rather 
with the general than the particular interest of the 
tombs of Palestine. The proof of identity in each spe- 
cial instance depends almost entirely on the locality. 
Instead of the acres of inscriptions which cover the tombs 
of Egypt, not a single letter which can with certainty 
be referred to an ancient period has been found in any 
ancient sepulchre of Palestine, and tradition is, in this 
class of monuments, found to be unusually fallacious. 

It may be well to notice the probable cause of this 
uncertainty of Jewish, as contrasted with the certainty 



259 



of Egyptian, and, we might add, of European tradition 
on the subject of tombs. However strongly the reverence 
for sacred graves may have been developed in the Jews of 
later times, the ancient Israelites never seem to have en- 
tertained the same feeling of regard for the resting-places 
or the remains of their illustrious dead, as was carried to so 
high a pitch in the earliest Pagan and in the later Christian 
world. " Let me bury my dead out of my sight," — "No 
man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day," express, 
if not the general feeling of the Jewish nation, at least 
the general spirit of the Old Testament. Every one 
knows the most signal instance in which this indifference 
was manifested. Somewhere, doubtless, near the walls 
of the old Jerusalem, or buried under its ruins, is the 
" new sepulchre hewn in the rock," where " the body of 
Jesus was laid," but the precise spot, never indicated by 
the Evangelists, was probably unknown to the next 
generation, and will, in all likelihood, remain a matter of 
doubt always. Modern pilgrims are troubled at the sup- 
position that such a locality should have been lost. The 
Israelites and the early Christians would have been 
surprised if it had been preserved. 

But the tombs are only one class of a general pecu- 
liarity, resulting from the physical structure of Palestine. 

Like all limestone formations, the hills of Palestine 
abound in caves. How great a part the caverns of 



26o SACRED SCENES. 



Greece played in the history and mythology of that 
country is well known. In one respect, indeed, those of 
Palestine were never likely to have been of the same 
importance, because, not being stalactitic, they could not 
so forcibly suggest to the Canaanite wanderers the images 
of sylvan deities, which the Grecian shepherds naturally 
found in the grottoes of Parnassus and Hymettus. But 
from other points of view we never lose sight of them. 
In these innumerable rents, and cavities, and holes, we 
see the origin of the sepulchres, which still, partly 
natural, and partly artificial, perforate the rocky walls of 
the Judsan valleys; the long line of tombs, of which I 
have just spoken, beginning with the cave of Machpelah 
and ending with the grave of Lazarus-which was "a 
cave, and a stone lay upon it,"-and "the sepulchre 
hewn in the rock, wherein never man before was laid." 
We see in them the shelter of the people of the land, in 
the terrible visitations of old, as when " Lot went up out of 

Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain for he feared to 

dwell in Zoar, and dwelt in a cave," or as when "in the 
days of Uzziah,king of Judah, they fled before the earth- 
quake to the < ravine ' of the mountains ;" to the rocky fis- 
sures, safer, even though themselves rent by like convul- 
sions, than the habitations of man. " Enter into the rock," 
so wrote Isaiah, probably in the expectation or the recollect- 
tion of this very catastrophe, " and hide thee in the dust, 



NATURAL MEMORIALS. 26 1 



for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of His majesty, 
when He ariseth to shake terribly the earth." We see 
in them, also, the hiding-places which served sometimes 
for the defence of robbers and insurgents, sometimes for 
the refuge of those " of whom the world was not worthy ;" 
the prototype of the catacombs of the early Christians, of 
the caverns of the Vaudois and the Covenanters. The 
cave of the five kings at Makkedah; the "caves and 
dens and strongholds" and "rocks" and "pits" and 
"holes," in which the Israelites took shelter from the 
Midianites in the time of Gideon, from the Philistines in 
the time of Saul; the cleft of the cliff Etam, into which 
Samson went down to escape the vengeance of his 
enemies ; the caves of David at Adullam, and at Maon, 
and of Saul at En-gedi ; the cave in which Obadiah hid 
the prophets of the Lord j the caves of the robber- 
hordes above the plain of Gennesareth; the sepulchral 
caves of the Gadarene demoniacs ; the cave of Jotapata, 
where Josephus and his countrymen concealed themselves 
in their last struggle— continue from first to last what 
has truly been called the " cave-life," of the Israelite 
nation. The stream of their national existence, like the 
actual streams of the Grecian rivers, from time to time 
disappears from the light of day, and runs under ground 
in these subterraneous recesses, to burst forth again 
when the appointed moment arrives ; a striking type, as 



262 



SACRED SCENES. 



it is a remarkable instance, of the preservation of the 
spiritual life of the Chosen People, "burning, but not 

consumed," " chastened, but not killed." 

From the moment that the religion of Palestine fell 
into the hands of Europeans, it is hardly too much to say 
that, as far as sacred traditions are concerned, it became 
a "religion of caves" — of those very caves which in 
earlier times had been unhallowed by any religious influ- 
ence whatever. Wherever a sacred association had to 
be fixed, a cave was immediately selected or found as its 
home. First in antiquity is the grotto of Bethlehem 
already in the second century regarded by popular belief 
as the scene of the Nativity. Next comes the grotto on 
Mount Olivet, selected as the scene of our Lord's last 
conversations before the Ascension. These two caves, 
as Eusebius emphatically asserts, were the first seats of 
the worship established by the Empress Helena, to 
which was shortly afterwards added a third, the sacred 
cave of the Sepulchre. To these were rapidly added the 
cave of the Invention of the Cross, the cave of the 
Annunciation at Nazareth, the cave of the Agony at 
Gethsemane, the cave of the Baptist in the " Wilderness 
of St. John," the cave of the shepherds of Bethlehem. 
And then again, partly perhaps the cause, partly the 
effect of this consecration of grottoes, began the caves 
of hermits. There was the cave of St. Pelagia on 



NATURAL MEMORIALS. 



263 



Mount Olivet, the cave of St. Jerome, St. Paula, and St. 
Eustochium at Bethlehem, the cave of St. Saba in the 
ravines of the Kedron, the remarkable cells hewn or 
found in the precipices of the Quarantania or Mount of 

the Temptation above Jericho. 

I have dwelt at length on the history of the caves, 
because it is the only instance of a close connection 
between the history or the religion of Palestine, and any 
of its more special natural features. It is not of the 
nature of limestone rocks to assume fantastic forms j yet 
some few legends there are suggested by the form of the 
rocks, — the cavity of the foot-mark on Mount Olivet; 
the supposed entombment of Adam's skull, in Golgotha ; 
the petrifaction of the ass at Bethany ; the sinuous mark 
of the Virgin's girdle by Gethsemane ; and the impression 
of Elijah's form on the rocky bank by the road side, 
near the convent of Mar Elias, between Bethlehem and 
Jerusalem. 

It is worth while to enumerate these instances, trifling 
as- they are, in order to illustrate the slightness of foun- 
dation which the natural features of Palestine afford, 
for the mythology almost inevitably springing out of so 
long a series of remarkable events. And this is in fact 
the final conclusion which is to be drawn from the 
character, or rather want of character, presented by the 
general scenery. If the first feeling be disappointment, 



264 



SACRED SCENES. 



yet the second may well be thankfulness. There is little 
in these hills and valleys on which the imagination can 
fasten. Whilst the great seats of Greek and Roman 
religion, at Delphi and Lebadea, by the lakes of Alba 
and of Aricia, strike even the indifferent traveller as 
deeply impressive ; Shiloh and Bethel on the other 
hand, so long the sanctuaries and oracles of God, almost 
escape the notice even of the zealous antiquarian in the 
maze of undistinguished hills which encompasses them. 
The first view of Olivet impresses us chiefly by its bare 
matter-of-fact appearance ; the first approach to the hills 
of Judea reminds the English traveller not of the most 
but of the least striking portions of the mountains of his 
own country. Yet all this renders the Holy Land the 
fitting cradle of a religion which expressed itself not 
through the voices of rustling forests, or the clefts of 
mysterious precipices, but through the souls and hearts of 
men ; which was destined to have no home on earth, 
least of all in its own birth-place ; which has attained its 
full dimensions only in proportion as it has travelled 
further from its original source, to the daily life and 
homes of nations as far removed from Palestine in 
thought and feeling, as they are in climate and latitude ; 
which alone of all religions, claims to be founded not 
on fancy or feeling, but on Fact and Truth. 

Sinai and Palestine, p. 147. 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



VARIED CHARACTER OF THE SCENERY 
OF PALESTINE. 

JT is said by Volney, and apparently with justice, that 
there is no district on the face of the earth which 
contains so many and such sudden transitions as Palestine. 
Such a country furnished at once the natural theatre of a 
history and a literature which were destined to spread 
into nations accustomed to the most various climates and 
imagery. There must of course, under any circumstances, 
be much in the history of any nation, eastern or western, 
northern or southern, which, to other quarters of the 
world, will be more or less unintelligible. Still it is easy 
to conceive that whatever difficulty is presented to Eu- 
ropean or American minds by the sacred writings, might 
have been greatly aggravated had the Bible come into 
existence in a country more limited in its outward 
imagery than is the case with Palestine. If the Valley 



2 gg DESCRIPTIVE. 



of the Nile or the Arabian Desert had witnessed the 
whole of the sacred history, we cannot but feel how 
widely it would have been separated from the ordinary 
thoughts of a European; how small a portion of our 
feelings and imaginations would have been represented 
by it. The truths might have been the same, but the 
forms in which they are clothed would have affected only 
a few here and there, leaving the great mass untouched. 
But as it is, we have the life of a Bedouin tribe, of an 
agricultural people, of sea-faring cities; the extremes of 
barbarism and of civilization ; the aspects of plain and of 
mountain; of a tropical, of an eastern, and almost of a 
northern climate. In Egypt there is a continual contact 
of desert and cultivated land; in Greece there is a 
constant intermixture of the views of sea and land ; in 
the ascent and descent of the great mountains of South 
America there is an interchange of the torrid and the 
arctic zones; in England there is an alternation of wild 
hills and valleys, with rich fields and plains. But in 
Palestine all these are combined. The Patriarchs could 
here gradually exchange the nomadic life, first for the 
pastoral, and then for the agricultural ; passing insensibly 
from one to the other as the Desert melts imperceptibly 
into the hills of Palestine. Ishmael and Esau could 
again wander back into the sandy waste which lay at 
their very doors. The scape-goat could still be sent from 



THE SCENERY OF PALESTINE. 



269 



the temple-courts into the uninhabited wilderness. John, 
and a greater than John, could return in a day's journey 
from the busiest haunts of men into the solitudes beyond 
the Jordan. The various tribes could find their several 
occupations of shepherds, of warriors, of traffickers, ac- 
cording as they were settled on the margin of the Desert, 
in the mountain fastnesses, or on the shore of the Mediter- 
ranean. The sacred poetry which was to be the delight 
and support of the human mind and the human soul in 
all regions of the world, embraced within its range the 
natural features of almost every country. 

The venerable poet of our own mountain regions 
[Wordsworth] used to dwell with genuine emotion on 
the pleasure he felt in the reflection that the Psalmists 
and Prophets dwelt in a mountainous country, and enjoyed 
its beauty as truly as himself. The devotions of our great 
maritime empire find a natural expression in the numerous 
allusions, which no inland situation could have permitted, 
to the roar of the Mediterranean Sea, breaking over the 
rocks of Acre and Tyre,—" the floods lift up their voice, 
the floods lift up their waves "—the " great and wide sea," 
whose blue waters could be seen from the top of almost 
every mountain, " wherein are things creeping innumer- 
able." "There go" the Phoenician " ships" with their white 
sails, and " there is that Leviathan," the monster of the 
deep, which both Jewish and Grecian fancy was wont to 



270 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



place in the inland ocean, that was to them all, and more 
than all, that the Atlantic is to us. Thither " they went 
down" from their mountains, and " did their business in 
ships," in the " great waters/' and saw the " wonders " of 
the " deep;" and along those shores were the "havens," 
few and far between, " where they would be " when " the 
storm became calm, and the waves thereof were still." 
Hermon, with his snowy summit always in sight, furnished 
the images, which else could hardly have been familiar, 
— "snow and vapours," "snow like wool," "hoar-frost 
like ashes," — "ice like morsels." And then again, the 
upland hills and level plains experienced all the usual 
alternations of the seasons — the "rain descending on the 
mown grass," the "early and the latter rain," the moun 
tains "watered from His chambers, the earth satisfied 
with the fruit of His works," — which, though not the same 
as the Ordinary returns of a European climate, were yet 
far more like it than could be found in Egypt, Arabia, or 
Assyria. 

Such instances of the variety of Jewish experience in 
Palestine, as contrasted with that of any other country, 
might easily be multiplied. But enough has been said to 
shew its fitness for the history or the poetry of a nation 
with a universal destiny, and to indicate one at least of 
the methods by which that destiny was fostered — the 
sudden contrasts of the various aspects of life and death, 



THE SCENERY OF PALESTINE. 



271 



sea and land, verdure and desert, storm and calm, heat 
and cold; which, so far as any natural means could 
assist, cultivated what has been well called the " variety 
in unity," so characteristic of the sacred books of Israel ; 
so unlike those of India, of Persia, of Egypt, of Arabia. 

Sinai and Palestine, p. 126. 



LEBANON AND ITS CEDARS. 



HE double range of the Lebanon and the Anti- 



Lebanon close the Land of Promise on the north, 
as the peninsula of Sinai on the south; but with this 
difference, that one part or other of these ranges, though 
beyond the boundaries of Palestine, is almost always 
within view. The thunder-storm, which the Psalmist 
tracks in its course throughout his country, begins by 
making the solid frame of Lebanon and Sirion to leap 
for fear, like the buffaloes of their own forests, and ends 
by shaking the distant wilderness of the lofty cliffs of 
Kadesh. From the moment that the traveller reaches 
the plain of Shechem in the interior, nay, even from 
the depths of the Jordan-valley by the Dead Sea, the 
snowy heights of Hermon are visible. The ancient 
names of this double range are all significant of this posi- 




LEBANON AND ITS CEDARS. 



273 



titan. It was " Sion," " the upraised ;" or " Hermon," 
"the lofty peak;" or "Shenir," and "Sirion," the 
glittering "breastplate" of ice; or, again, " Lebanon," the 
"Mount Blanc" of Palestine; "the White Mountain" of 
ancient times ; the mountain of the " Old White-headed 
Man," or the " Mountain of Ice," in modern times. So 
long as its snowy tops were seen, there was never want- 
ing to the Hebrew poetry the image of unearthly gran- 
deur, which nothing else but perpetual snow can give ; 
especially as seen in the summer, when " the firmament 
around it seems to be on fire." And not grandeur only, 
but fertility and beauty were held up, as it were, on its 
heights, as a model for the less fortunate regions which 
looked up to it. The "dews" of the mists that rose from 
the watery ravines, or of the clouds that rested on the 
summit of Hermon were perpetual witnesses of freshness 
and coolness, — the sources, as it seemed, of all the 
moisture, which was to the land of Palestine what the 
fragrant oil was to the garments of the high priest ; what 
the . refreshing influence of brotherly love was to the 
whole community. Still more was this luxuriant life of 
vegetation rooted in the valleys and on the slopes of 
Lebanon, the western range, which in this respect far 
exceeds its eastern rival. " His fruit shall shake like 
Lebanon." This is the description which only applies to 
the thin threads of verdure, or the occasional spots of 



274 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



cultivation, in the desert heights of Hermon ; but it is 
literally true of the slopes and terraces of Lebanon, as they 
overhang the Bay of Beirut, or of Tripoli. In the long- 
ings of the Hebrew lawgiver, the one distinct image 
which blended with the general hope of seeing " the good 
land beyond Jordan" was of " the 'good' mountain, even 
Lebanon." 

Two great valleys part the Anti-Lebanon from the 
Lebanon. The southernmost and smallest of the two is 
the Wady-et-Teim. the vale of the Hasbany or Hasbeya 
river— the geographical, though not the historical, source 
of the Jordan. The whole valley has its sacred associa- 
tions, but it derives them not from Classical or Hebrew 
times, but from the singular sect which there first estab- 
lished itself in strength. It was the refuge, in the 
eleventh century, of Derazy, the founder of the Druzes. 
At Hasbeya is their original sanctuary, and from the hills 
and villages along this valley have radiated their settle- 
ments through the whole of the two ranges. 

The northern valley is one of wider extent and wider 
fame. " Ccele-Syria " or " the Basin of Syria," was the 
name given by the Greeks or Romans to the vast green 
plain which divides the range of Lebanon and Anti- 
Lebanon, the former reaching its highest point in the 
snowy crest to the north, behind which lie the Cedars ; 
the latter in the still more snowy crest of Hermon j the 



LEBANON AND ITS CEDARS. 



275 



culmination of the range being thus in the one at the 
northern, in the other at the southern extremity, of the 
valley which they bound. The view of this great valley 
is chiefly remarkable as being exactly to the eye what it 
is on maps — the "hollow" between the two mountain 
ranges of " Syria/' or, according to the ancient Hebrew de- 
nomination, which has subsisted almost unchanged from 
the time of Amos to the present day, the broad " Cleft," 
BekcHah or Bukda. A screen, through which the Leontes 
breaks out, closes the south end of the plain. There is 
a similar screen at the north end, but too remote to be 
visible, " the entering-in of Hamath," so often mentioned 
as the extreme limit in this direction of the widest pos- 
sible dominion of the Israelite Empire. 

From the plain of Ccele-Syria, we mount the range of 
Lebanon. Its physical features have been already de- 
scribed. Its connection with the western portions of the 
Holy Land must have been as close as those of Hermon 
with the eastern portions. From its southern extremity 
the views over Palestine must have been those which the 
Assyrian conquerors enjoyed as they first looked from 
" the tower of Lebanon " upon their prey. 

Such another view is obtained from the south-eastern 
extremity of the same range— the ridge of Dahar, close 
to the Wady-et-Teim. Lebanon and Hermon are visible 
at once ; and the valley of the Jordan is spread out in 

t 2 



276 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



both its upper stages -.—that of the Hasbany river— that of 
the Merom lake— ending in the still distant glimpse of 
the waters of the Sea of Galilee. It is one of the best 
geographical prospects in Syria. 

The historical monuments of Lebanon are much less 
numerous than those of Anti-Lebanon. The temple of 
Astarte at Afka is the only one of importance. From 
its romantic defile the river of Adonis "ran purple to the 
sea," with " blood of Thammuz yearly wounded ; " that 
is, with the stains of the red earth which gave birth to the 
legend. The Nahr-el-Kelb— the "Dog" or "Wolf" river 
so called from the fabled dog, whose bark at the approach 
of strangers could be heard as far as Cyprus— is marked 
by the confluence of the inscriptions of the four empires 
of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome;— so remarkable both 
in themselves and in their history. It is instructive to note 
their gradual resuscitation from the neglect of centuries. 
Maundrell sees them for a moment, and conjectures them 
to be "perhaps the representations of some persons buried 
hereabouts, whose sepulchres may probably also be dis- 
covered by the diligent observer." Pococke sees in them 
only " some small figures of men in relief cut out in 
different compartments, but very much defaced by time." 
The Roman inscription was first successfully copied. 
Next, the Egyptian absorbed the attention of scholars. 
Finally, the Assyrian came no less distinctly to light. 



LEBANON AND ITS CEDARS, 



277 



The Greek inscription is too small to deserve notice, were 
it not for its connection with the others. It is on the 
Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, abounding as they do 
along the face of the rocky wall, that the attention of the 
Biblical student is chiefly fixed. 

There, side by side, we encounter the figures of the 
earliest and latest oppressors of Israel, — Rameses and 
Sennacherib. Rameses must have passed by that road at 
a time when the sacred history had hardly penetrated 
into these parts. His memorials can scarcely seem more 
ancient to us than they did to the earliest Grecian 
travellers. When we trace the well-known Egyptian 
figures — the king and the God as usual giving and receiving 
offerings, — it is with the same feeling as that with which 
Herodotus must have climbed up the same pathway 
more than two thousand years ago. "In the part of 
Syria, called Palestine," to use his own words, " I myself 
saw the. monuments of Sesostris still standing." 

But the visit of Sennacherib here recorded, is a direct 
reflection of his scornful speech as reported by the pro- 
phet Isaiah, and opens to us a striking historical scene 
in this portion of Syria. a By the multitude of my chariots 
am I come to the height of the mountains, and to the 
sides of Lebanon ; and I will cut down the height of his 
cedars and the beauty of his cypresses ; and I entered 
into the height of his border, and the forest of his park. 



278 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



I have digged and drunk waters ; I have made a bridge." 

The multitude of his chariots/' such as they are seen 
on the Assyrian monuments of the further East, must 
have wound their difficult way through those romantic 
gorges, up to the very " height of the mountain ranges," 
and along " the extreme edges of Lebanon," along the 
valley of the streams which he drained off by his armies, 
or over which he threw bridges for them to pass. 

But there was one spot more sacred than all, to which 
the conqueror boasts that he had penetrated. He had gone 
into " the extremest height of Lebanon, the forest of its 
park and there he had cut down with relentless inso- 
lence "the height of its cedars, the beauty of its fir- 
trees." 

In these words it is scarcely possible not to recognise 
the sacred recess of the present cedars of Lebanon. They 
have been so often described, that any detailed account 
would here be superfluous. But a few words may be 
allowed for a scene so interesting, and in which pro- 
bably some new impression is received by every 
traveller who approaches them. In 1853 I had been 
prevented from visiting them by the snow ; and the same 
obstacle in 1862 again rendered impossible the usual 
route over the crest of the mountain from Baalbek, or even 
over its south-western shoulder from Afka. For this reason 
we approached the place from Tripoli. As the Wady-et- 



LEBANON AND ITS CEDARS. 



279 



Teim, the valley of the Hasbariy, is the sacred country 
of the Druzes, so the valleys and hills between Tripoli or 
Ehden, converging towards the deep glen of the " Holy 
River," the Kadisha— probably so called from its nume- 
rous monasteries— is the Kesrouan, the sacred country of 
the Maronites— the fierce Christian sect with which the 
Druzes are at deadly war. On the edge of the river is 
Kanobin (Coenobion), the residence of the patriarch. On 
the heights above it is their chief village, Ehden. It is 
from this village, with its many churches, and its beautiful 
viaducts surrounding the castle of its daring chief, Sheykh 
Joseph, that the ascent is made to the cedars. A wide 
view opens of the long terraces of the moraines (as they 
are technically called) of ancient glaciers descending into 
the valley. Here a slip of cultivated land reaches up into 
the verge of their desolate fields. Behind this is a 
semicircle of the snowy range of the summit of Lebanon. 
Just in the centre of the view, in the dip between the 
moraines and the snow-clad hills behind, is a single dark 
massive clump— the sole spot of vegetation that marks 
the mountain wilderness. This is the Cedar Grove. It 
disappears as we ascend the intervening range; and does 
not again present itself till we are close upon it. Then 
the exactness of Sennacherib's description comes out. 
It is literally on the very "edge of the height of Leba- 
non"— a " park " or " garden " of the forest, or " garden of 



280 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



God," as truly as the "jardin" or " garden," well known 
to Swiss travellers in the bosom of the moraines of Mont 
Blanc. It stands as if on an island eminence, broken 
into seven lengths, of which six are arranged round the 
seventh, a square mount in the midst, on which stands 
the rude Maronite chapel. The variation of tint and 
outline thus makes the whole group a kind of epitome 
of forest scenery. The outskirts of the eminence are 
clothed with the younger trees, whose light feathery 
branches veil the more venerable patriarchs in the inte- 
rior of the grove. This younger growth, which has en- 
tirely sprung up within the last two centuries, amounts 
now to more than three hundred. 

The older trees, which are so different in appearance 
as to seem to belong to a different race, are now about 
twelve in number. Their forms are such as must always 
have impressed the imagination of the inhabitants. Their 
massive branches, clothed with a scaly texture, almost 
like the skin of living animals, and contorted with all the 
multiform irregularities of age, may well have suggested 
these ideas of regal, almost divine, strength and stolidity, 
which the sacred writers ascribe to them. They stand at 
the apex, so to say, of the vegetable world. « From the 
cedar tree that is in Lebanon" downwards, is the know- 
ledge of Solomon. "To the cedar of Lebanon" up- 
wards is the destruction of the trees from the burning 



LEBANON AND ITS CEDARS. 



28l 



bramble of Jotham. The intermarriage of the inferior 
plants with the cedar is the most inconceivable presump- 
tion of all. The shivering of their rock-like stems by 
the thunderbolt is like the shaking of the solid moun- 
tain itself. In ancient days the grove must have been 
much more extensive — or rather, perhaps, the great trees 
then overspread the whole. Now they are huddled 
together in two or three of the central vales ; and the 
peculiar grace of the long sweeping branches feathering 
down to the ground, of the cedar, as transplanted into 
Europe, is there unknown. In one or two instances, the 
boughs of these aged trees are held up by a younger 
one; others, again, of which the trunks are decayed, 
are actually supported in the gigantic anus of their elder 
brethren. But in earlier times the breadth and extent 
of the trees seem to be as much noticed as their height 
and solidity. The cedar is the model of the " spreading 
abroad" — the constant growth — of the righteous man; 
his boughs are "multiplied," and "become long," "fair," 
" thick," " overshadowing " in " length," and in " multi- 
tude." So vigorous and vast was this life of the cedar 
groves, that it seemed as if all the snows and waters 
of Lebanon were gathered up into them. They are 
"filled;" their "rest is by quiet waters;" "the waters 
make them great ; the deep set them up on high." The 
rills from the surrounding heights collect on the upper 



282 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



flats, and form one stream, which winds amongst the 
moraines on its way to the lower flat, whence it is preci- 
pitated into the gorge of the Kadisha. The cedars grow 
on that portion of the moraine which immediately borders 
this stream, and nowhere else. 

And the spot thus becomes a centre of life to the wil- 
derness in the midst of which it stands. " Nature was 
never silent in the forest ; the cicale here were extraor- 
dinarily loud ; and the trees were full of little birds of the 
brightest green-and-gold plumage, with a short clear note." 
This is the very scene suggested to Ezekiel, who reports 
that under the cedar "all the fowls of the air nestle, and 
all the beasts of the earth bring forth their prey," and still 
more in the Psalm which gathers the whole of animal 
life round the cedars. " The birds making their nests" — 
" the storks in the fir trees "—the " marmot " or shophan 
in the surrounding cliffs ; the chamois on the hills ; the 
roaring of the lions in the stillness of the night : whilst 
the distant view is filled up on the one side by the sea, 
with its monsters, its vast animal life, and its ships, and 
on the other by the " garment of light in the sky," the 
« clouds," and the " wind " on the mountain ; the springs 
of the Kadisha, and the other rushing streams of the 
Lebanon; the cornfields and the vineyards on the nearer 
slopes, "for the service of man: to make glad and to 
strengthen the heart of man." And if their very appearance 



LEBANON AND ITS CEDARS. 



283 



and aspect thus connect them with the poetry of the Bible, 
their history is also bound up with its history. We know 
not who first attacked the forests of Lebanon ; but already, 
in the time of David, they were invaded for the building 
of the palaces at Jerusalem. Many were the trees dragged 
down by the steep ascent — no doubt to the harbour of 
Tripoli — to be embarked on rafts for Joppa, for the wood- 
work of Solomon's Temple ; and for the vast palace which, 
from its rustic carving in cedar-wood, seems to be almost 
a transplantation of the sacred grove to Jerusalem — " the 
house of the forest of Lebanon ; " whilst in the gardens, 
the costly cedars transplanted from Lebanon seemed to 
have taken the place of the native sycamore. For statues, 
for houses, for masts of ships, the huge branches were 
carried off to Tyre and Sidon. But the great destroyer, 
long remembered, was Sennacherib. He is described as 
making it his special boast that he had penetrated to the 
secret garden or park, and cut them down; and on his 
approach, probably, the prophetic wail is lifted up — "Open 
thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fir may devour thy cedars : 
Howl, fir tree, for the cedar is fallen." And, in like man- 
ner, on his fall, the triumphant cry is raised in the Lower 
World — "See, the fir-trees rejoice at thee and the cedars 
of Lebanon, saying — Since thou art laid down, no feller is 
ome up against us." 
Since that time they have become rarer and rarer. Other 



284 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



groups, indeed, are said to exist in different parts of the 
mountains; but they have been reported only by two travel- 
lers. By the time of Justinian the supply of cedar-wood 
was almost, and by the time of our Edward IV. entirely, 
exhausted for the purposes of building. And now, for at 
least two centuries, they have become invested, by the 
veneration of pilgrims, and by the increased admiration 
of nature, with a sanctity almost approaching to that with 
which they were revered as special miracles of Divine 
power by the Hebrew Psalmists. The old Hebrew name 
of erets has never deserted them, and is even perpetuated 
in the puny imitation of them in the Western larch. The 
Maronites long guarded them, under penalties of excom- 
munication ; and honour them as "the Twelve Apostles," 
— "the Friends of Solomon." The sanctuary, which was a 
rude altar, and is now a rude wooden chapel, they greatly 
frequent on the festival which the Oriental Church treats 
as the Feast of all " High Mountains," the Feast of the 
"Transfiguration/' 

Sinai and Palestine, p. 403. 



THEBES AND ITS COLOSSAL STATUES. 



LONE of the cities of Egypt, the situation of Thebes 



is as beautiful by nature as by art. The monotony 
of the two mountain ranges, Libyan and Arabian, for the 
first time assumes a new and varied character. They 
each retire from the river, forming a circle round the 
wide green plain : the western rising into a bolder 
and more massive barrier, and enclosing the plain at 
its northern extremity as by a natural bulwark ; the 
eastern, further withdrawn, but acting the same part to 
the view of Thebes as the Argolic mountains to the 
plain of Athens, or the Alban hills to Rome — a varied 
and bolder chain, rising and falling in almost Grecian 
outline, though cast in the conical form, which marks 
the hills of Nubia further south, and which, perhaps, 
suggested the Pyramids. Within the circle of these two 




286 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



ranges, thus peculiarly its own, stretches the green plain 
on each side the river to an unusual extent ; and on each 
side of the river, in this respect unlike Memphis, but 

like the great city of the further East on the Euphrates, ? 

like the cities of northern Europe on their lesser streams, 
—spread the city of Thebes, with the Nile for its mighty 
thoroughfare. " Art thou better than No-Amon " — that 
was situated by the " rivers of the Nile " — that had the 
waters round about it, — whose rampart was " the sea-like 
stream," and whose wall was " the sea-like stream ? " 

" Thebes" proper, "Taba," the capital — No-Amon (the 
Hebrew name of Thebes) the sanctuary of Amnion — 
stood on the eastern plain. This sanctuary, as founded 
by Osirtasen in the time of Joseph, as restored by the 
successor of Alexander the Great, still exists, a small 
granite edifice, with the vestiges of the earliest temple 
round it. This is the centre of the vast collection of 
palaces or temples which, from the little village hard by, 
is called Karnac. 

Imagine a long vista of courts, and gateways, and 
halls — and gateways, and courts, and colonnades, and 
halls ; here and there an obelisk shooting up out of the 
ruins, and interrupting the opening view of the forest of 
columns. Imagine yourself mounted on the top of one 
of these halls or gateways, and looking over the plain 
around. This mass of ruins, some rolled down in 



THEBES AND ITS COLOSSAL STATUES. 287 



avalanches of stones, others perfect and painted, as 
when they were first built, is approached on every side 
by avenues of gateways, as grand as that on which you 
are yourself standing. East and west, and north and 
south, these vast approaches are found, — some are shat- 
tered, but in every approach some remain ; and in some 
can be traced, besides, the further avenues, still in part 
remaining, by hundreds together, avenues of ram-headed 
sphinxes. 

Every Egyptian temple has, or ought to have, one 
of these great gateways formed of two sloping towers, 
with the high perpendicular front between. But what 
makes them remarkable at Thebes is their number, and 
their multiplied concentration on the one point of Karnac. 
This no doubt is the origin of Homer's expression 
" The City of the Hundred Gates and in ancient times, 
even from a distance, they must have been beautiful. 
For, instead of the brown mass of sandstone which they 
now present, the great sculptures of the Gods and con- 
quering kings which they uniformly present were painted 
within and without; and in the deep grooves which 
can still be seen, twofold or fourfold, on each side the 
portal, with enormous holes for the transverse beams of 
support, were placed immense red flagstaffs, with Isis- 
headed standards, red and blue streamers floating from 
them. Close before almost every gateway in this vast 



288 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



array, were the colossal figures, usually in granite, of the 
great Rameses, sometimes in white or red marble, of 
Amenophis and of Thothmes, whose fragments still re- 
main. And close by these were pairs of towering obelisks 
(for in Egypt they always stood in pairs), which can gene- 
rally be traced by pedestals on either side, or by the soli- 
tary twin, mourning for its brother, either lying broken 
beside it, or far away in some northern region at Rome, 
at Paris, or at Petersburg. 

I have spoken of the view from the top of the great 
gateway which overlooks the whole array of avenues. I 
must speak also of that which from the other end com- 
mands the whole series of ruins, each succeeding the 
other in unbroken succession. It is a view something of 
the kind of that up the Forum from the Colosseum of 
the Capitol. You stand in front of a stately gateway, 
built by the Ptolemies. Immediately in the foreground 
are two Osiride pillars— their placid faces fixed upon you 
—a strange and striking contrast to the crash of temple 
and tower behind. That crash, however, great as it is, 
has not, like that of the fall of Rome, left mere empty 
spaces where only imagination can supply what once 
there was. No— there is not an inch of this Egyptian 
Forum, so to call it, which is not crowded with frag- 
ments, if not buildings, of the past. No Canina is 
wanted to figure the scene as it once was. You have 



THEBES AND ITS COLOSSAL STATUES. 



289 



only to set up again the fallen obelisks which lie at your 
feet ; to conceive the columns as they are still seen in 
parts, overspreading the whole; to reproduce all the 
statues, like those which still remain in their august 
niches ; to gaze on the painted walls and pillars of the 
immense hall, which even now can never be seen without 
a thrill of awe, — and you have ancient Thebes before you. 

And what a series of history it is 1 In that long defile 
of ruins every age has borne its part, from Osirtasen I. 
to the latest Ptolemy, from the time of Joseph to the 
Christian era; through the whole period of Jewish history, 
and of the ancient world, the splendour of the earth kept 
pouring into that space for two thousand years. 

Two ideas seem to reign through the various sculp- 
tures. First, the endeavour to reproduce, as far as possi- 
ble, the life of man, so that the mummy of the dead King, 
whether in his long sleep, or on his awakening, might still 
be encompassed by the old familiar objects. Egypt, with 
all its peculiarities, was to be perpetuated in the depths 
of the grave; and truly they have succeeded. This is what 
makes this valley, of Tombs like the galleries of a vast 
Museum. Not the collections of Pompeii at Naples give 
more knowledge of Greek or Roman life than these do 
of Egyptian. The kitchen, the dinners, the boating, the 
dancing, the trades, all are there — all fresh from the 
hands of the painters of the primeval world. 

u 



290 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



The other idea is that of conducting the King to the 
world of death. 

The further you advance into the tomb, the deeper 
you become involved in endless processions of jackal 
headed gods, and monstrous forms of genii, good and 
evil ; and the Goddess of Justice, with her single ostrich 
feather ; and barges, carrying mummies, raised aloft over 
the sacred cake, and mummies themselves ; and, more 
than all, everlasting convolutions of serpents in every 
possible form and attitude ; human-legged, human-headed, 
crowned, entwining mummies, — enwreathing or embraced 
by processions, — extending down whole galleries, so that 
meeting the head of the serpent at the top of a staircase, 
you have to descend to its very end before you reach his 
tail. At last you arrive at the close of all — the vaulted 
hall, in the centre of which lies the immense granite 
sarcophagus, which ought to contain the body of the 
King. Here the processions above, below and around- 
white and black, and red and blue, legs and arms and 
wings spreading in enormous forms over the ceiling ; and 
below lies the coffin itself. 

It seems certain that all this gorgeous decoration was, on 
the burial of the King, immediately closed, and meant to 
be closed for ever ; so that what we now see was intended 
never to be seen by any mortal eyes except those of 
the King himself when he awoke from his slumbers. Not 



THEBES AND ITS COLOSSAL STATUES. 



291 



only was the entrance closed, but in some cases — chiefly 
in that of the great sepulchre ofOsirei — the passages were 
cut in the most devious directions, the approaches to 
them so walled up as to give the appearance of a termi- 
nation long before you arrived at the actual chamber, lest 
by any chance the body of the King might be disturbed. 
And yet in spite of all these precautions, when these 
gigantic fortresses have been broken through, in no 

instance has the mummy been discovered 

No written account has given me an adequate im- 
pression of the effect, past and present, of the colossal 
figures of the Kings. What spires are to a modern city, 
— what the towers of a cathedral are to its nave and 
choir, — that the statues of the Pharaohs were to the 
streets and temples of Thebes. The ground is strewed 
with their fragments ; there were avenues of them tower 
ing high above plain and houses. Three of gigantic 
size still remain. One was the granite statue of Rameses 
himself, who sat on the right side of the entrance to his 
palace. By some extraordinary catastrophe, the statue 
has been thrown down, and the Arabs have scooped 
their millstones out of his face, but you can still see 
what he was, — the largest statue in the world. Far and 
wide that enormous head must have been seen, eyes, 
mouth, and ears. Far and wide you must have seen his 

vast hands resting on his elephantine knees 

u 2 



292 DESCRIPTIVE. 



Nothing which now exists in the world can give any 
notion of what the effect must have been when he was 
erect. Nero towering above the Colosseum may have 
been something like it; but he was of bronze, and 
Rameses was of solid granite. Nero was standing 
without any object; Rameses was resting in awful 
majesty after the conquest of the whole of the then 
known world. No one who entered that building, 
whether it were temple or palace, could have thought of 
anything else but that stupendous being who thus had 
raised himself up above the whole world of gods and men. 

And when from the statue you descend to the palace, 
the same impression is kept up. It is the earliest in- 
stance of the enshrinement in Art of the historical 
glories of a Nation. But everywhere the same colossal 
proportions are preserved. Everywhere the King is con- 
quering, ruling, worshipping, worshipped. The Palace is 
the Temple. The King is Priest. He and his horses are 
ten times the size of the rest of the army. Alike in 
battle and in worship, he is of the same stature as the 

gods themselves 

It carries one back to the days "when there were 
giants on the earth." It shows how the King, in that 
first monarchy, was the visible God upon earth. The 
only thing like it that has since been seen is the deifica- 
tion of the Roman emperors. No pure Monotheism could 



THEBES AND ITS COLOSSAL STATUES. 



293 



for a moment have been compatible with such an intense 
exultation of the conquering King. " I am Pharaoh ; " 
" By the life of Pharaoh " Say unto Pharaoh, Whom art 
thou like in thy greatness ? " — all these expressions seem 
to acquire new life from the sight of this monster statue. 

And now let us pass to the two others. They are the 
only statues remaining of an avenue of eighteen similar, 
or nearly similar, statues, some of whose remnants lie in 
the field behind them which led to the palace of 
Amenophis III., every one of the statues being Amen- 
ophis himself, thus giving in multiplication what Rameses 
gained in solitary elevation.' He lived some reigns 
earlier than Rameses, and the statues are of ruder work- 
manship and coarser stone. To me they were much 
more striking close at hand when their human forms 
were distinctly visible, than at a distance, when they 
looked only like two towers or land-marks. 

The sun was setting; the African range glowed red 
behind them ; the green plain was dyed with a deeper 
green beneath them ; and the shades of evening veiled 
the vast rents and fissures in their aged frames. As 
I looked back at them in the sunset, and they rose up 
in front of the background of the mountain, they seemed, 
indeed, as if they were part of it — as if they belonged to 
some natural creation rather than to any work of art. 
And yet, as I have said, when anywhere in their neigh- 



294 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



bourhood, the human character is never lost. Their faces 
are dreadfully mutilated % indeed, the largest has no face 
at all, but is from the waist upwards a mass of stones or 
rocks piled together in the form of a human head and 
body. Still, especially in that dim light, and from their 
lofty thrones, they seem to have faces, only of hideous 
and grinning ugliness. 

And now, who was it that strewed the plain with their 
countless fragments ? Who had power to throw down 
the Colossus of Rameses ? Who broke the statue of 
Amenophis from the middle upwards ? From the time 
of the Roman travellers who have carved their names 
in verses innumerable on the foot of Amenophis, there 
has been but one answer, — Cambyses. He was, in the 
traditions of that time, the Cromwell of Egypt. It is 
oossible that Rameses, it is probable that Amenophis 
were shattered by earthquakes. But the recollection of 
Cambyses shews the feeling he had left while here, as the 
great Iconoclast. What an effort this implies of fanatical 
or religious zeal ! What an impression it gives of that 
Persian hatred of idols, which is described in the Bible, 
only here carried to excess against these Majestic Kings; 
" Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth." Well might the 
idols of Babylon tremble before Cyrus, if such was the 
fate of the Egyptian Pharaohs before Cambyses. 

Sinai and Palestine. Introduction, p. xxxviii. 



/ 



THE GREEK EASTER. 



HERE is one aspect in which it is interesting for us 



to regard the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is 
not merely the centre of the worship of Christendom, it is 
also in an especial manner the Cathedral Church of Pales- 
tine and of the East ; and in it the local religion, which 
attaches to all the Holy Places, reaches its highest pitch, 
and, as is natural, receives its colour from the Eastern 
and barbarous nations, who necessarily contribute the 
chief elements to what may be called its natural con- 
gregation. It may be well, therefore, to give a descrip- 
tion of the Greek Easter, which will also sum up the 
general impressions of the whole building, in whose his- 
tory it forms so remarkable a feature. The time is the 
morning of Easter Eve, which, by a strange anticipation, 
here, as in Spain, eclipses Easter Sunday. The place is 




296 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



the great Rotunda of the nave ; the model of all the 
circular churches of Europe, especially that of Aix-la- 
Chapelle. Above is the great dome with its rents and 
patches waiting to be repaired, and the sky seen through 
the opening in the centre, which here, as in the Pan- 
theon, admits the light and air of day. Immediately 
beneath are the galleries, in one of which on the northern 
side — that of the Latin convent — are assembled the 
Frank spectators. Below is the Chapel of the Sepulchre 
— a shapeless edifice of brown marble; on its shabby 
roof, a meagre cupola, tawdry vases with tawdry flowers, 
and a forest of slender tapers ; whilst a blue curtain is 
drawn across its top to intercept the rain admitted 
through the dome. It is divided into two chapels — 
that on the west containing the Sepulchre, — that on 
the east containing (i the Stone of the Angel." Of 
these, the eastern chapel is occupied by the Greeks and 
Armenians. On its north side is a round hole from 
which the Holy Fire is to issue for the Greeks. A corre- 
sponding aperture is on the south side for the Armenians. 
At the western extremity of the Sepulchre, but attached 
to it from the outside, is the little wooden chapel, the 
only part of the Church allotted to the poor Copts ; and 
further west, but parted from the Sepulchre itself, is the 

still poorer chapel of the still poorer Syrians 

The Chapel of the Sepulchre rises from the dense mass 



THE GREEK EASTER. 



of pilgrims, who sit or stand wedged round it ; whilst 
round them, and between another equally dense mass, 
which goes round the w r alls of the church itself, a lane is 
formed by two lines, or rather two circles of TurkisTi 
soldiers stationed to keep order. For the spectacle which 
is about to take place nothing can be better suited than 
the form of the Rotunda, giving galleries above for the 
spectators, and an open space below for the pilgrims and 
their festival. For the first two hours everything is tran- 
quil. Nothing indicates what is coming, except that the 
two or three pilgrims who have got close to the aperture 
keep their hands fixed in it with a clench never relaxed. 
It is about noon that this circular lane is suddenly broken 
through by a tangled group rushing violently round 
till they are caught by one of the Turkish soldiers. It 
seems to be the belief of the Arab Greeks that unless 
they run round the Sepulchre a certain number of times 
the fire will not come. Possibly, also, there is some 
strange reminiscence of the funeral-games and races 
round the tomb of an ancient chief. Accordingly, the 
night before, and from this time forward for two hours, a 
succession of gambols takes place, which an Englishman 
can only compare to a mixture of prisoner's base, foot- 
ball, and leap-frog, round and round the Holy Sepulchre. 
First, he sees these tangled masses of twenty, thirty, 
fifty men, starting in a run, catching hold of each other, 



298 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



lifting one of themselves on their shoulders, sometimes 
on their heads, and rushing on with him till he leaps off, 
and some one else succeeds; some of them dressed in 
sheep-skins, some almost naked; one usually preceding 
the rest as a fugleman, clapping his hands, to which 
they respond in like manner, adding also wild howls, of 
which the chief burden is — " This is the tomb of Jesus 
Christ — God save the Sultan " — " Jesus Christ has re- 
deemed us." What begins in the lesser groups soon 
grows in magnitude and extent, till at last the whole of 
the circle between the troops is continuously occupied 
by a race, a whirl, a torrent of these wild figures, like the 
Witches' Sabbath in " Faust," wheeling round the Sepul- 
chre. Gradually the frenzy subsides or is checked ; the 
course is cleared, and out of the Greek Church, on the 
east of the Rotunda, a long procession with embroidered 
banners, supplying in their ritual the want of images, 
begins to defile round the Sepulchre. 

From this moment the excitement, which has before 
been confined to the runners and dancers, becomes 
universal. Hedged in by the soldiers, the two huge 
masses of pilgrims still remain in their places, all joining, 
however, in a wild succession of yells, through which 
are caught from time to time strangely, almost affect- 
ingly, mingled, the chants of the procession — the solemn 
chants of the Church of Basil and Chrysostom, mingled 



THE GREEK EASTER. 



299 



with the yells of savages. Thrice the procession paces 
round ; at the third time the two lines of Turkish soldiers 
join and fall in behind. One great movement sways the 
multitude from side to side ; the crisis of the day is now 
approaching. The presence of the Turks is believed to 
prevent the descent of the fire, and at this point it is 
that they are driven, or consent to be driven, out of the 
church. In a moment, the confusion, as of a battle and 
victory, pervades the church. In every direction the 
raging mob bursts in upon the troops, who pour out of 
the church at the south-east corner — the procession is 
broken through, the banners stagger and waver. They 
stagger and waver, and fall amidst the flight of priests, 
bishops, and standard-bearers hither and thither before 
the tremendous rush. In one small but compact band 
the Bishop of Petra, (who is on this occasion the Bishop 
of " the Fire," the representative of the Patriarch) is 
hurried to the Chapel of the Sepulchre, and the door is 
closed behind him. The whole church is now one 
heaving sea of heads resounding with an uproar which 
can be compared to nothing less than that of the Guild- 
hall of London at a nomination for the City. One 
vacant space alone is left ; a narrow lane from the aper- 
ture on the north side of the chapel to the hall of the 
church. By the aperture itself stands a priest to catch 
the fire ; on each side of the lane, so far as the eye can 



3°° 



DESCRIPTIVE. 



reach, hundreds of bare arms are stretched out like the 
branches of a leafless forest — like the branches of a forest 
quivering in some violent tempest. 

In earlier and bolder times the expectation of the 
Divine presence was at this juncture raised to a still 
higher pitch by the appearance of a dove hovering 
above the cupola of the chapel — to indicate, so Maun- 
drell was told, the visible descent of the Holy Ghost. 
This extraordinary act, whether of extravagant symbolism 
or of daring profaneness, has now been discontinued ; but 
the belief still continues — and it is only from the know- 
ledge of that belief that the full horror of the scene, the 
intense excitement of the next few moments, can be 
adequately conceived. Silent — awfully silent — in the 
midst of this frantic uproar, stands the Chapel of the 
Holy Sepulchre. If any one could at such a moment be 
convinced of its genuineness, or could expect a display 
of miraculous power, assuredly it would be that its very 
stones would cry out against the wild fanaticism without, 
and unhappy weakness within, by which it is at that hour 
desecrated. At last the moment comes. A bright flame 
as of burning wood appears inside the hole — the light, 
as every educated Greek knows and acknowledges, 
kindled by the bishop within — the light, as every pilgrim 
believes, of the descent of God Himself upon the holy 
Tomb. Any distinct feature or incident is lost in the 



THE GREEK EASTER. 



301 



universal whirl of excitement which envelops the church, 
as slowly, gradually, the fire spreads from hand to hand, 
from taper to taper, through that vast multitude — till at last 
the whole edifice from gallery to gallery, and through the 
area below, is one wide blaze of thousands of burning 
candles. It is now that, according to some accounts, the 
Bishop or Patriarch is carried out of the chapel in triumph 
on the shoulders of the people, in a fainting state, " to 
give the impression that he is overcome by the glory of 
the Almighty, from whose immediate presence he is be- 
lieved to come." It is now that a mounted horseman, 
stationed at the gates of the church, gallops off with a 
lighted taper to communicate the sacred fire to the lamps 
of the Greek Church in the convent at Bethlehem. It 
is now that the great rush to escape from the rolling smoke 
and suffocating heat, and to carry the lighted tapers 
into the streets and houses of Jerusalem, through the one 
entrance to the Church, leads at times to the violent pres- 
sure which in 1834 cost the lives of hundreds. For a 
short time the pilgrims run to and fro — rubbing their faces 
and breasts against the fire to attest its supposed harm- 
lessness. But the wild enthusiasm terminates the moment 
that the fire is communicated ; and perhaps not the least 
extraordinary part of the spectacle is the rapid and total 
subsidence of a frenzy so intense. The furious agitation 
of the morning is strangely contrasted with the profound 



DESCRIPTIVE . 



repose of the evening, when the church is once again filled, 

through the area of the rotunda, the Chapels of Copt and 

Syrian, the subterranean Church of Helena, the great 
nave of Constantine's Basilica, the stairs and platform of 
Calvary itself, with the many chambers above, — every part, 
except the one chapel of the Latin Church, filled and 
overlaid by one mass of pilgrims, wrapt in deep sleep and 
waiting for the midnight service. 

Such is the Greek Easter, the greatest moral argument 
against the identity of the spot which it professes to 
honour, stripped indeed of some of its most revolting 
features, yet still, considering the place, the time, and 
the intention of the professed Miracle, probably the most 
offensive imposture to be found in the world. 

It is doubtless a miserable thought that for such an 
end as this, Constantine and Helena planned and builded 
—that for such a worship as this, Godfrey and Tancred, 
Richard and St. Louis, fought and died. Yet in justice 
to the Greek clergy it must be remembered that this is 
but the most extreme and the most instructive case of 
what every Church must suffer which has to bear with 
the weakness and fanaticism of its members, whether 
brought about by its own corruption or by long and in- 
veterate ignorance. And however repulsive to our minds 
may be the orgies of the Arab pilgrims, we ought rather 
perhaps to wonder that these wild creatures should be 



THE GREEK EASTER. 



Christians at all, than that being such they should take 
this mode of expressing their devotion at this great anni- 
versary. The very violence of the paroxysm proves its 
temporary character. On every other occasion their 
conduct is sober and decorous, even to dulness, as 
though — according to the happy expression of one of the 
most observant of Eastern travellers — they " were not 
working out, but transacting the great business of sal- 
vation." 

Sinai and Palestine, p. 464^ 



HISTORICAL. 



THE RELATIONS OF CIVIL AND 
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 



O a great extent Civil and Ecclesiastical History are 



inseparable ; they cannot be torn asunder without 
infinite loss to both. It is indeed true that in common 
parlance, Ecclesiastical History is often confined within 
limits so restricted as to render such a distinction only 
too easy. Of the numerous theological terms of which 
the original sense has been defaced, marred, and clipped 
by the base currency of the world, few have suffered so 
much, in few has " the gold become so dim, the most 
fine gold so changed," as in the word " ecclesiastical.' 
The substantive from which it is derived has fallen far 
below its ancient Apostolical meaning, but the adjective 
"ecclesiastical" has fallen lower still. It has come to 
signify, not the religious, not the moral, not even the 
social or political interests, of the Christian community, 




X 2 



3 o8 



H ISTORICAL. 



but often the very opposite of these— its merely acci- 
dental, outward, ceremonial machinery. We call a con- 
test for the retention or the abolition of vestments 
" ecclesiastical," not a contest for the retention or the 
abolition of the slave-trade. We include in " Ecclesias- 
tical History" the life of the most insignificant bishop or 
the most wicked of Popes, not the life of the wisest of 
philosophers or the most Christian of kings. But such a 
limitation is as untenable in fact as it is untrue in theory. 
The very stones of the spiritual temple cry out against 
such a profanation of the rock whence they were hewn. 
If the Christian religion be a matter, not of mint, anise, 
or cummin, but of justice, mercy, and truth; if the 
Christian Church be not a priestly caste or a monastic 
order, or a little sect, or a handful of opinions, but 
"the whole congregation of faithful men, dispersed 
throughout the world ; " if the very word which of old 
represented the chosen "people" (Xad Q ) is now to be 
found in the "laity;" if the Biblical usage of the phrase 
"Ecclesia" literally justifies Tertullian's definition, Ubi 
Ires stmt laid, ibiest ecclesia ; then the range of the history 
of the Church is as wide as the range of the world 
which it was designed to penetrate, as the whole body 
which its name includes. 

By a violent effort, no doubt, the two spheres can be 
kept apart; by a compromise, tacit or understood, the 



' CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 309 



student of each may avoid looking the other in the face ; 
under special circumstances, the ultimate relation between 
the course of Christian society and the course of human 
affairs may be forgotten or set aside. Josephus the 
priest may pass over in absolute silence the new sect 
which arises in Galilee to disturb the Jewish hierarchy. 
Tacitus the philosopher may give nothing more than a 
momentary glance at the miserable superstition of the 
fanatics who called themselves Christians. Napoleon 
the conqueror, when asked on the coast of Syria to visit 
the holy city, may make his haughty reply, — " Jerusalem 
does not enter into the line of my operations." But this 
is not the natural nor the usual course of the greatest ex- 
amples both in ancient and modern times. Observe the 
description of the Jewish Church by the sacred historians. 
Consider the immense difference for all future ages, if 
the lives of Joshua, David, Solomon, and Elijah had been 
omitted, as unworthy of insertion, because they did not 
belong to the priestly tribe ; if the Pentateuch had been 
confined to the Book of Leviticus ; if the Books of Kings 
and Chronicles had limited themselves to the sayings and 
doings of Zadok and Abiathar, or even of Nathan and 
Gad. Remember also the early chroniclers of Europe ; 
almost all of them at once the sole historians of their age, 
yet, even by purpose and profession, historians only of 
the Church. Take but one instance, the Venerable Bede. 



3io 



HISTORICAL. 



His " Ecclesiastical History of England " begins, not with 
the arrival of Augustine, but with the great dawn of Bri- 
tish civilization at the landing of Caesar; and, for the 
period over which it extends, it is the sufficient and almost 
the only authority for the fortunes of the Anglo-Saxon 
commonwealth. 

In later times, since history has become a distinct 
science, the same testimony is still borne by the highest 
works of genius and research in this wide field. Gibbon's 
" Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " is, in great 
part, however reluctantly or unconsciously, the history of 
"the rise and progress of the Christian Church.' , His 
true conception of the grandeur of his subject extorted 
from him that just concession which his own natural 
prejudice would have refused; and it was remarked not 
many years ago, by Dr. Newman, that up to that time 
England had produced no other Ecclesiastical History 
worthy of the name. This reproach has since been re- 
moved by the great work of Dean Milman ; but it is the 
distinguishing excellence of that very history that it em- 
braces within its vast circumference the whole story of 
mediaeval Europe. Even in that earlier period when 
the world and the Church were of necessity distinct and 
antagonistic, Arnold rightly perceived, and all subsequent 
labours in this field tend to the same result, that each 
will be best understood, when blended in the common 



CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 3II 



history of the Empire which exercised so powerful an 
influence over the development of the Christian society 
within its bosom, whilst by that society it was itself un- 
dermined and superseded. And the two chief historians 
of France and England in recent times — Guizot in his 
Lectures on French Civilization, Macaulay in his English 
History — have both strongly brought out, as necessary 
parts of their dissertations or narratives, the religious 
influences which by inferior writers of one class have 
been neglected, or by those of another class been rent 
from their natural context. 

How to adjust the relations of the two spheres to 
each other is almost as indefinite a task in history as 
it is in practice and in philosophy. In no age are they 
precisely the same. Sometimes, as in the period of the 
Roman Empire, the influence of one on the other is 
more by contagion, by atmosphere, even by contrast, than 
by direct intercourse. Sometimes the main interest of 
religious history hangs on an institution, like Episcopacy ; 
on a war, like the Crusades ; on a person, like Luther. 
In some periods, as in the middle ages, the combination 
of the secular and religious elements will be effected by 
the political or the intellectual influence of the clergy. 
The lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the lives 
of the Prime Ministers of England, are for five hundred 
years almost indivisible. The course of European re- 
volution for nearly a thousand years moves round the 



312 



HISTORICAL. 



throne of the Papacy. Or again, the rise of a new power 
or character will, even in these very ages, suddenly transfer 
the spiritual guidance of men to some high-minded ruler 
or gifted writer, who is for the time the true arbiter or 
interpreter of the interests and the feelings of Christendom. 
In the close of the thirteenth century, it is not a priest or 
a Pope, but a king and an opponent of Popes, who 
stands forward as the acknowledged representative of the 
Christian Church in Europe ; S. Louis in France, not 
Gregory IX. at Rome. In the fourteenth century it is not 
a schoolman or a bishop that we summon before us as the 
best exponent of mediaeval Christianity; it is not the 
" seraphic " or the " angelic doctor," but the divine poet 
Dante, who reveals to us the feelings and thoughts of 
the whole age respecting this world and the next. And 
if we pass to our own country, he must be a blind guide 
who would take us through the English Reformation 
without seeing on every stage of it the impress of the iron 
will and broad aims of Henry VIII. ; or who would 
portray the English Church without recognising the com- 
prehensive policy of Elizabeth. Or yet again, of all our 
brilliant English divines of the seventeenth century, there 
is not one who can be fairly said to have exercised as much 
influence over the popular theology of this nation, as has 
been undoubtedly exercised by a half-heretic, half-puritan 
layman, the author of " Paradise Lost." 

These instances indicate with sufficient precision the 



CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 313 



devious yet obvious path which, without losing sight of 
the wide horizon on the one hand, or without undue con- 
traction of his view on the other, the student of Eccle- 
siastical History may safely follow. If we imagine our- 
selves overlooking the broad expanse into which the 
stream bursts forth from the mountains of its early stages, 
our purpose henceforth will be, not so much to describe 
the products of the forest, or the buildings of the city 
which have grown up on the banks of the river, but to 
track the river itself through its various channels, under 
its overhanging thickets, through the populous streets and 
gardens to which it gives life ; to see what are its main, 
what its tributary streams ; what the nature of its waters ; 
how far impregnated with new qualities, how far coloured, 
by the various soils, vegetations, uses, through which they 
pass ; to trace their secret flow, as they go softly through 
the regions which they fertilise ; not finding them where 
they do not exist, not denying their power where they do 
exist; to welcome their sound in courses however tor- 
tuous ; to acknowledge their value, however stained, in 
their downward and onward passage. Difficult as it may 
often be to find the stream, yet when it is found it will 
guide us to the pure pastures of this world's wilderness, 
and lead us beside the still waters. 

Eastern Church. Introduction, p. xxxii. 



AIDS TO STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL 
HISTORY. 



T) Y the mere necessity of exploring any one subject 
to the bottom we must at times touch original 
authorities. But original records are not confined merely 
to contemporaneous histories, nor even to contem- 
poraneous literature, sermons, poems, laws, decrees. 
Study the actual statues and portraits of the men, the 
sculptures and pictures of the events : if they do not give 
us the precise image of the persons and things themselves, 
they give us at least the image left on those who came 
nearest to them. Study their monuments, their grave- 
stones, their epitaphs, on the spots where they lie. Study, 
if possible, the scenes of the events, their aspect, their 
architecture, their geography j the tradition which has 
survived the history, the legend which has survived the 
tradition; the mountain, the stream, the shapeless 



AIDS TO STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 315 



stone, which has survived even history and tradition 
and legend. 

Take two examples instead of a hundred. There 
are few more interesting episodes in modern Eccle- 
siastical History than that of the Scottish Covenanters. 
But the school in which that episode must be studied 
is Scotland itself. The caves, and moors, and moss- 
hags of the Western Lowlands; the tales, which 
linger still, of the black charger of Claverhouse, of the 
strange encounters with the Evil one, of the cry of the 
plover and peewit round the encampments on the hill- 
side, are more instructive than many books. The rude 
grave-stones which mark the spots where those were laid 
who bore testimony to " the covenanted work of reforma- 
tion, and Christ's kingly government of His house," bring 
before us in the most lively, because in the most con- 
densed, authentic, original form, the excited feeling of the 
time, and the most peculiar traits of the religion of the 
Scottish people. Their independence, their fervour, their 
fierceness may have belonged to the age. But hardly 
out of Scotland could be found their stubborn endur- 
ance, their thirst for vengeance, their investment of the 
narrowest questions of discipline and ceremony with 
the sacredness of universal principles. We almost fancy 
that we see the survivors of the dead spelling and scooping 
out their savage rhymes on the simple monuments, each 



3*6 



HISTORICAL. 



catching from each the epithets, the texts, the names, 
almost Homeric in the simplicity and the sameness with 
which they are repeated on those lonely tombstones, from 
shore to shore, of the Scottish kingdom. 

Or turn to a similar instance of kindred but wider in- 
terest. What insight into the familiar feelings and thoughts 
of the primitive ages of the Church can be compared to 
that afforded by the Roman catacombs ! Hardly noticed 
by Gibbon or Mosheim, they yet give us a likeness of 
the life of those early times beyond that derived from 
any of the written authorities on which Gibbon and 
Mosheim repose. Their very structure is significant; their 
vast extent, their labyrinthine darkness, their stifling atmos- 
phere, are a standing proof both of the rapid spread of 
the Christian conversions, and of the active fury of the 
heathen persecutions. The subjects of the sculptures and 
paintings place before us the exact ideas with which the 
first Christians were familiar; they remind us, by what they 
do not contain, of the ideas with which the first Christians 
were not familiar. We see with our own eyes the parables, 
and the miracles, and the stories from the Old Testament, 
which sustained the courage of the early martyrs, and the 
innocent festivities of the early feasts of Christian love. 
The barbarous style of the sculptures, the bad spelling, 
the coarse engraving of the epitaphs, impress upon us 
more clearly than any sermon the truth that God chose 



AIDS TO STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 317 



the weak, and base, and despised things of the world, to 
bring to nought the things which are mighty. He who is 
thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the catacombs will 
be nearer to the thoughts of the Early Church than he who 
has learned by heart the most elaborate treatise, even of 

Tertullian or Origen 

The Prayer-book as it stands is a long gallery of Eccle- 
siastical History, which, to be understood and enjoyed 
thoroughly, absolutely compels a knowledge of the greatest 
events andnames of all periods of the Christian Church. To 
Ambrose we owe our Te Deum ; Charlemagne breaks the 
silence of our Ordination prayers by the Veni Creator 
Spiritus. The Persecutions have given us one creed, and 
the Empire another. The name of the first great Patriarch 
of the Byzantine Church closes our daily service ; the 
Litany is the bequest of the first great Patriarch of the 
Latin Church, amidst the terrors of the Roman pesti- 
lence. Our collects are the joint productions of the 
Fathers, the Popes, and the Reformers. Our Commu- 
nion Service bears the traces of every fluctuation of the 
Reformation, through the two extremes of the reign of 
Edward to the conciliating policy of Elizabeth, and the 
reactionary zeal of the Restoration. 

Though the course of Ecclesiastical History be dark, 
there is always a bright side to be found in Ec- 
clesiastical Biography. Study the lives, study the 



3i8 



HISTORICAL. 



thoughts, and hymns, and prayers, study the death- 
beds of good men. They are the salt, not only of the 
world, but of the Church. In them we see, close at 
hand, what on the public stage of history we see through 
every kind of distorted medium and deceptive refraction. 
In them we can trace the history if not of " the Catholic 
Church," at least of " the Communion of Saints." The 
Acta Sanctorum were literally, as a great French his- 
torian has observed, the only light, moral and intellectual, 
of the centuries, from the seventh to the ninth, which 
may without exaggeration, be called the Dark ages. 
"Their glories," it has been well said, "shine far 
beyond the limits of their daily walk in life; their 
odours are wafted across the boundaries of unfriendly 
societies; their spiritual seed is borne away, and takes 
root and bears manifold in fields far distant from the 
gardens of the Lord where they were planted." ... It is 
well known that, amidst the trials which beset Henry Mar- 
tyn the Missionary, on his voyage to India, the study in 
which he found his chief pleasure and profit was in the 
kindly notices of ancient saints which form the redeeming 
points of Milner's " History of the Church." " I love," 
(so he writes in his diary) " to converse, as it were, with 
those holy bishops and martyrs, with whom I hope, 

through grace, to spend a happy eternity The 

example of the Christian Saints in the early ages has been 



AIDS TO STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 319 



a source of sweet reflection to me The holy love 

and devout meditations of Augustine and Ambrose I delight 
to think of. . . . No uninspired sentence ever affected me 
so much as that of the historian, that to believe, to suffer, 
and to love, was the primitive faith." What he so felt 
and expressed may be, and has been, felt by many others. 
Such biographies are the common, perhaps the only 
common, literature alike of rich and poor. Hearts, to 
whom even the Bible speaks in vain, have by such works 
been roused to a sense of duty and holiness. However 
cold the response of mankind has been to other portions 
of ecclesiastical story, this has always commanded a 

reverential, even an excessive attention 

The actual effects, the manifold applications, in history, 
of the words of Scripture, give them a new instruction, 
and afford a new proof of their endless vigour and vitality. 
Look through any famous passage of the Old, or yet more 
of the New Testament ; there is hardly one that has not 
borne fruit in the conversion of some great saint, or in 
the turn it has given to some great event. At a single 
precept of the Gospels, Antony went his way and sold 
all that he had; at a single warning of the Epistles, 
Augustine's hard heart was melted beneath the fig-tree 
at Milan; a single chapter of Isaiah made a penitent 
believer of the profligate Rochester. A word to St. 
Peter has become the stronghold of the Papacy ; a word 



320 



HISTORICAL. 



from St. Paul has become the stronghold of Luther. 
The Psalter alone, by its manifold applications and uses 
in after times, is a vast palimpsest, written over and over 
again, illuminated, illustrated, by every conceivable in- 
cident and emotion of men and of nations; battles, 
wanderings, dangers, escapes, death-beds, obsequies, of 
many ages and countries, rise, or may rise, to our view, 
as we read it 

Lectures 071 Ecclesiastical History ', p. 56. 



THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BLACK 
PRLNCE. 



\ \ TE all like to know where a famous man has been 
educated ; and in the case of Edward the Black 
Prince we know the place, and also see the reason 
why it was chosen. Any of you who have been at 
Oxford will remember the long line of buildings which 
overlook the beautiful curve of High Street, the build- 
ings of "Queen's College," the College of the Queen. At 
the time of which I speak, that college was the greatest 
— two others only in any regular collegiate form existed 
in Oxford. It had but just been founded by the chap- 
lain of Queen Phiiippa, and took its name from her. 
There it was that, according to tradition, the Prince 
of Wales, her son, as in the next generation, Henry V., 
was brought up. If we look at the events which fol- 
lowed, he could hardly have been twelve years old when 



322 



HISTORICAL. 



he went. But there were then no schools in England, 
and their place was almost entirely supplied by the uni- 
versities. Queen's College is much altered in eveiy way 
since the little Prince went there ; but they still keep an 
engraving of the vaulted room, which he is said to have 
occupied ; and though most of the old customs which 
prevailed in the college, and which made it a very pecu- 
liar place even then, have long since disappeared, some 
which are mentioned by the founder, and which therefore 
must have been in use when the Prince was there, still 
continue. You may still hear the students summoned to 
dinner, as he was, by the sound of a trumpet, and, in the 
hall, you may still see, as he saw, the Fellows sitting all 
on one side of the table, with the Head of the college in 
the centre, in imitation of " the Last Supper," as it is 
commonly represented in pictures. The very names of 
the head and the twelve fellows (the number first 
appointed by the founder, in likeness of our Lord and the 
Apostles), who were presiding over the college when 
the Prince was there, are known to us. He must have 
seen what has long since vanished away, the thirteen 
beggars, deaf, dumb, maimed, or blind, daily brought into 
the hall, to receive their dole of bread, beer, pottage, and 
fish. He must have seen the seventy poor scholars, in- 
stituted after the example of the seventy disciples, and 
learning from their two chaplains to chant the service. He 



THE EARLY YEARS OF TILE BLACK PRINCE. 



323 



must have heard the mill within or hard by the college- 
walls, grinding the Fellows' bread. He must have seen the 
porter of the college going round the rooms betimes in the 
morning to shave the beards, and wash the heads, of the 
Fellows. In these and many other curious particulars, 
we can tell exactly what the customs and appearance of 
the College were when the Prince was there. It is more 
difficult to answer another question, which we always 
wish to know about famous men— Who were his com- 
panions? An old tradition (unfortunately beset with 
doubts) points to one youth, at that time in Oxford, and 
at Queen's College, whom we shall all recognise as an 
old acquaintance— John Wycliffe, the first English Re- 
former, and the first translator of the Bible into English. 
He would have been a poor boy, in a threadbare coat, 
and devoted to study, and the Prince probably never 
exchanged looks or words with him. But it is almost 
certain that he must have seen him, and it is interesting 
to remember that once, at least, in their lives, the great 
soldier of the age had crossed the path of the great 
Reformer. Each thought and cared little for the other ; 
their characters, and pursuits, and sympathies, were as 
different as were their stations in life ; let us be thankful 
if we have learned to understand them both, and see what 
was good in each, far better than they did themselves. 
We now pass to the next events of his life ; those which 

Y 2 



324 



HISTORICAL. 



have really made him almost as famous in war, as Wycliffe 
has been in peace — the two great battles of Cressy and 
of Poitiers. I will not now go into the origin of the war, 
of which these two battles formed the turning-points. It 
is enough for us to remember that it was undertaken by 
Edward III. to gain the crown of France, through a 
pretended claim — for it was no more than a pretended 
claim — through his mother. And now, first, for Cressy. 

It was Saturday, the 28th of August 1346, 

and it was at four in the afternoon that the battle 
commenced. The French army advanced from the 
south-east, after a hard day's march to overtake the 
retiring enemy. Every one, from the King down to 
the peasants on the road, went crying " Kill, kill ! " 
and were in a state of the greatest excitement, draw- 
ing their swords, and thinking they were sure of their 
prey. What the French King chiefly relied upon (be- 
sides his great numbers) was the troop of fifteen thou- 
sand cross-bowmen from Genoa. These were made 
to stand in front : when, just as the engagement was 
about to take place, one of those extraordinary incidents 
occurred, which often turn the fate of battles, as they 
do of human life in general. A tremendous storm 
gathered from the west, and broke in thunder, and rain, 
and hail, on the field of battle. The sky was darkened 
and the horror was increased by the hoarse cries of crows, 



THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 325 



and ravens, which fluttered before the storm, and struck 
terror into the hearts of the Italian bowmen, who 
were unaccustomed to these northern tempests. And 
when at last the sky had cleared, and they prepared 
their cross-bows to shoot, the strings had been so wet 
by the rain that they could not draw them. By this time 
the evening sun streamed out in full splendour over the 
black clouds of the western sky— right in their faces ; 
and at the same moment the English archers, who had 
kept their bows in cases during the storm, and so had 
their strings dry, let fly their arrows so fast and thick, 
that those who were present could only compare it to 
snow or sleet. Through and through the heads, and 
necks, and hands of the Genoese bowmen, the arrows 
pierced. Unable to stand it, they turned and fled; and 
from that moment the panic and confusion was so great, 
that the day was lost. 

But though the storm, and the sun, and the archers 
had their part, we must not forget the Prince. He 
was, we must remember, only sixteen, and yet he com- 
manded the whole English army. It is said that 
the reason of this was, that the King of France had 
been so bent on destroying the English forces, that he 
had hoisted the Sacred Banner of France— the great 
scarlet flag, embroidered with golden lilies, called the 
Oriflamme— as a sign that no quarter would be given; 



326 



HISTORICAL. 



and that when King Edward saw this, and saw the hazard 
to which he should expose not only the army, but the 
whole kingdom, if he were to fall in battle, he deter- 
mined to leave it to his son. Certain it is that, for what- 
ever reason, he remained on a little hill, on the out- 
skirts of the field, and the young Prince, who had been 
knighted a month before, went forward with his com- 
panions in arms, into the very thick of the fray ; and 
when his father saw that the victory was virtually gained, 
he forbore to interfere. " Let the child win his spurs,' 1 
he said, in words which have since become a proverb, 
" and let the day be hisT The Prince was in very great 
danger at one moment ; he was wounded and thrown 
to the ground, and only saved by Richard de Beaumont, 
who carried the great banner of Wales, throwing the 
banner over the boy as he lay on the ground, and stand- 
ing upon it till he had driven back the assailants. 
The assailants were driven back, and far through the 
long summer evening, and deep into the summer night, 
the battle raged. It was not till all was dark, that the 
Prince and his companions halted from their pursuit ; and 
then huge fires and torches were lit up, that the King 
might see where they were. And then took place the 
touching interview between the father and the son ; the 
king embracing the boy in front of the whole army, by 
the red light of the blazing fires, and saying, " Sweet son, 



THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 



327 



God give you good perseverance; you are my true son— 
right royally have you acquitted yourself this day, and 
worthy are you of a crown?— and the young Prince, 
after the reverential manner of those times, " bowed to 
the ground, and gave all the honour to the King his father." 
The next day the King walked over the field of carnage 
with the Prince, and said, " What think you of a battle ? 
is it an agreeable game V* 

The general result of the battle was the deliverance of 
the English army from a most imminent danger, and 
subsequently the conquest of Calais, which the King im- 
mediately besieged and won, and which remained in the 
possession of the English from that day to the reign of 
Queen Mary. From that time the Prince became the 
darling of the English, and the terror of the French ; and, 
whether from this terror, or from the black armour which 
he wore on that day, and which contrasted with the 
fairness of his complexion, he was called by them " Le 
Prince Noir,"— the Black Prince, and from them the 
name has passed to us ; so that all his other sounding 
titles by which the old poems call him — " Prince of 
Wales, Duke of Aquitaine," — are lost in the one memo- 
rable name which he won for himself in his first fight 
at Cressy. 

And now we pass over ten years, and find him on 
the field of Poitiers. Again we must ask, what brought 



328 



HISTORICAL. 



him there, and why the battle was fought ? He was this 
time alone; his father, though the war had rolled on 
since the battle of Cressy, was in England. But, in 
other respects, the beginning of the fight was very like 
that of Cressy. Gascony belonged to him by right, 
and from this he made a descent into the neighbour- 
ing provinces, and was on his return home, when the 
King of France — John, the son of Philip — pursued him 
as his father had pursued Edward III., and overtook him 
suddenly on the high upland fields, which extend for 
many miles south of the city of Poitiers. It is the third 
great battle which has been fought in that neighbourhood, 
— the first was that in which Clovis defeated the Goths, 
and established the faith in the creed of Athanasius 
throughout Europe — the second was that in which Charles 
Martel drove back the Saracens, and saved Europe from 
Mahometanism — the third was this, the most brilliant of 
English victories over the French. The spot, which is 
about six miles south of Poitiers, is still known by the 
name of the Battle-field. Its features are very slightly 
marked — two ridges of rising ground, parted by a gentle 
hollow ; behind the highest of these two ridges is a large 
tract of copse and underwood, and leading up to it from 
the hollow is a somewhat steep lane, there shut in by 
woods and vines on each side. It was on this ridge that 
the prince had taken up his position, and it was solely by 



THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 329 



the good use he made of this position that the victory 
was won. The French army was arranged on the other 
side of the hollow in three great divisions, of which the 
King's was the hindmost. It was on Monday, September 
19th 1356, at 9 a.m., that the battle began. All the 
Sunday had been taken up by fruitless endeavours of 
Cardinal Talleyrand to save the bloodshed, by bringing 
the King and Prince to terms ; a fact to be noticed for 
two reasons, first because it shows the sincere and 
Christian desire which animated the clergy of those 
times, in the midst of all their faults, to promote 
peace and goodwill amongst the savage men with whom 
they lived ; and secondly because the refusal of the 
French King and Prince to be persuaded shows, on this 
occasion, the confidence of victory which had possessed 
them. 

The Prince offered to give up all the castles and pri- 
soners he had taken, and to swear not to fight in 
France again for seven years. But the King would hear of 
nothing but his absolute surrender of himself and his 
army on the spot. The Cardinal laboured till the very last 
moment, and then rode back to Poitiers, having equally 
offended both parties. The story of the battle, if we 
remember the position of the armies, is told in a moment. 
The Prince remained firm in his position ; the French 
charged with their usual chivalrous ardour — charged up 



330 



HISTORICAL. 



the lane ; the English archers, whom the Prince had sta- 
tioned behind the hedges at each side, let fly their showers 
of arrows, as at Cressy; in an instant the lane was 
choked with the dead ; and the first check of such head- 
strong confidence was fatal. The Prince in his turn 
charged ; a general panic seized the whole French army ; 
the first and second division fled in the wildest confusion ; 
the third alone where King John stood made a gallant 
resistance ; the King was taken prisoner, and by noon the 
whole was over. Up to the gates of the town of Poitiers, 
the French army fled and fell, and their dead bodies 
were buried by heaps within a convent which still re- 
mains in the city. It was a wonderful day. It was 
8000 to 60,000 ; the Prince who had gained the battle 
was still only twenty-six, that is, a year younger than 
Napoleon at the beginning of his campaigns, and the 
battle was distinguished from all others by the number, 
not of the slain but of the prisoners — one Englishman 
often taking four or five Frenchmen. 

Perhaps, however, the best known part of the whole is 
the scene where the King first met the Prince in the even- 
ing, which cannot be better described than by old 
Froissart. 

" The day of the battle at night, the Prince gave a 
supper in his lodgings to the French King, and to most of 
the great lords that were prisoners. The Prince caused 



THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 33I 



the King and his son to sit at one table, and other lords, 
knights, and squires at the others; and the Prince always 
served the King very humbly, and would not sit at the 
King's table, although he requested him — he said he was 
not qualified to sit at the table with so great a prince as 
the King was. Then he said to the King, ' Sir, for God's 
sake make no bad cheer; though your will was not 
accomplished this day. For, sir, the King, my father, will 
certainly bestow on you as much honour and friendship 
as he can, and will agree with you so reasonably that you 
shall ever after be friends ; and, Sir, I think you ought to 
rejoice, though the battle be not as you will, for you have 
this day gained the high honour of prowess, and have 
surpassed all others on your side in valour. Sir, I say 
not this in raillery, for all our party, who saw every man's 
deeds, agree in this, and give you the palm and chaplet' 
"Therewith the Frenchmen whispered among them- 
selves that the Prince had spoken nobly, and that most 
probably he would prove a great hero, if God preserved 
his life, to persevere in such good fortune." 

Historical Memorials of Canterbury, p. 132. 



THE TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 



T ET us turn to the tomb of Edward the Black 
Prince and see how it sums up his whole life. Its 
bright colours have long since faded, but enough still re- 
mains to show us what it was as it stood after the sacred 
remains had been placed within it. There he lies : no 
other memorial of him exists in the world so authentic. 
There he lies, as he had directed, in full armour, his head 
resting on his helmet, his feet with the likeness of " the 
spurs he won" at Cressy, his hands joined as in that last 
prayer which he had offered up on his death-bed. There 
you can see his fine face with the Plantagenet features, 
the flat cheeks, and the well-chiselled nose, to be traced 
perhaps in the effigy of his father in Westminster Abbey, 
and his grandfather in Gloucester Cathedral. On his 
armour, you can still see the marks of the bright gilding 



THE TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 



333 



with which the figure was covered from head to foot, so 
as to make it look like an image of pure gold. High 
above are suspended the brazen gauntlets, the helmet, 
with what was once its gilded leopard-crest, and the 
wooden shield, the velvet coat also, embroidered with 
the arms of France and England, now tattered and colour- 
less, but then blazing with blue and scarlet. There, too, 
still hangs the empty scabbard of the sword, wielded per- 
chance at his three great battles, and which Oliver Crom- 
well, it is said, carried away. On the canopy over the 
tomb there is the faded representation — painted after the 
strange fashion of those times — of the Persons of the Holy 
Trinity, according to the peculiar devotion which he had 
entertained. In the pillars you can see the hooks to which 
was fastened the black tapestry, with its crimson border 
and curious embroidery, which he directed in his will 
should be hung round his tomb and the shrine of Becket. 
Round about the tomb, too, you will see the ostrich 
feathers, which, according to the old, but I am afraid 
doubtful, tradition, we are told he won at Cressy from the 
blind King of Bohemia, who perished in the thick of the 
fight ; and interwoven with them, the famous motto, with 
which he used to sign his name, " Houmout," " Ich 
diene." If, as seems most likely, they are German words, 
they exactly express what we have seen so often in his 
life, the union of " Hoch muth," that is high spirit, with 



334 



" Ich dien," / serve. They bring before us the very 
scene itself after the battle of Poitiers, where, after 
having vanquished the whole of the French nation, he 
stood behind the captive king, and served him like an 
attendant. 

And, lastly, carved about the tomb, is the long inscrip- 
tion, composed by himself before his death, in Norman 
French, still the language of the court, written, as he 
begged, clearly and plainly, that all might read it. Its 
purport is to contrast his former splendour, and vigour, 
and beauty, with the wasted body which is now all that is 
left. What was a natural thought at all times was 
specially characteristic of this period, as we see from the 
further exemplification of it in Chichele's tomb, a hundred 
years later, where the living man and the dead skeleton 
are contrasted with each other in actual representation. 
But in this case it would be singularly affecting, if we can 
suppose it to have been written during the four years' 
seclusion, when he lay wasting away from his lingering 
illness, his high fortunes overclouded, and death full in 
prospect. 

When we stand by the grave of a remarkable man, it is 
always an interesting and instructive question to ask- 
especially by the grave of such a man, and in such a 
place— what evil is there, which we trust is buried with 
him in his tomb ? what good is there, which may still live 



THE TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 



335 



after him ? What is it, that, taking him from first to last, 
his life and his death teach us. 

First, then, the thought which we most naturally con- 
nect with the name of the Black Prince, is the wars of the 
English and French — the victories of England over France. 
Out of those wars much noble feeling sprung, — feelings of 
chivalry and courtesy and respect to our enemies, and 
(perhaps a doubtful boon) of unshaken confidence in our- 
selves. Such feelings are amongst our most precious 
inheritances, and all honour be to him who first inspired 
them into the hearts of his countrymen, never to be again 
extinct. But it is a matter of still greater thankfulness to 
remember, as we look at the worn-out armour of the Black 
Prince, that those wars of English conquest are buried 
with him, never to be revived. Other wars may arise 
in the unknown future still before us — but such wars as 
he and his father waged, we shall, we may thankfully hope, 
see no more again for ever. We shall never again see a 
King of England, or a Prince of Wales, taking advantage 
of a legal quibble to conquer a great neighbouring country, 
and laying waste with fire and sword a civilised kingdom, 
from mere self-aggrandisement. We have seen how, on 
the eve of the battle of Poitiers, one good man with a 
patience and charity truly heroic did strive by all that 
Christian wisdom and forbearance could urge, to stop that 
unhallowed warfare. It is a satisfaction to think that his 



336 HISTORICAL. 



wish is accomplished j that what he laboured to effect 
almost as a hopeless project, has now well-nigh become 
the law of the civilised world. It is true, that the wars of 
Edward III. and the Black Prince were renewed again 
on a more frightful scale in the next century, renewed at 
the instigation of an Archbishop of Canterbury, who 
strove thus to avert the storm which seemed to him to be 
threatening the Church : but these were the last, and the 
tomb and college of Chichele are themselves lasting monu- 
ments of the deep remorse for his sin, which smote his 
declining years. With him finished the last trace of those 
bloody wars : may nothing ever arise, in our time or our 
children's, to break the bond of peace between England 
and France, which is the bond of the peace of the 
world. 

Secondly, he brings before us all that is most charac- 
teristic of the ages of chivalry. You have heard of his 
courtesy, his reverence to age and authority, his generosity 
to his fallen enemy. But I must in justice remind you, 
that the evil as well as the good of chivalry was seen 
in him, and that this evil, like that which I spoke of 
just now, is also, I trust, buried with him. One single 
instance will show what I mean. In those disastrous 
years which ushered in the close of his life, a rebellion 
arose in his French province of Gascony, provoked by 
his wasteful expenditure. One of the chief towns where 



THE TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 



337 



the insurgents held out, was Limoges. The Prince, 
though then labouring under his fatal illness, besieged 
and took it ; and as soon as it was taken, he gave orders 
that his soldiers should massacre every one that they 
found ; whilst he himself, too ill to walk or ride, was 
carried through the streets in a litter, looking on at the 
carnage. Men, women, and children, threw themselves 
on their knees, as he passed on through the devoted city, 
crying " Mercy, mercy but he went on relentlessly, 
and the massacre went on, till struck by the gallantry 
of three French knights, whom he saw fighting in one of 
the squares against fearful odds, he ordered it to cease. 
Now, for this dreadful scene there were doubtless many 
excuses — the irritation of illness, the affection for his 
father, whose dignity he thought outraged by so deter- 
mined a resistance, and the indignation against the in- 
gratitude of a city on which he had bestowed many 
favours. But what is especially to be observed, is not 
so much the cruelty of the individual man as the great 
imperfection of that kind of virtue which could allow 
of such cruelty. Dreadful as this scene seems to us, to 
men of that time it seems quite natural. The poet who 
recorded it, had nothing more to say concerning it, than 
that : — 

" All the townsmen were taken or slain 
By the noble Prince of price ; 



338 



HISTORICAL. 



Whereat great joy had all around, 

Those who were his friends ; 

And his enemies were 

Sorely grieved, and repented 

That they had begun the war against him." 

This strange contradiction arose from one single cause. 
The Black Prince, and those who looked up to him as 
their pattern, chivalrous, kind, and generous as they were 
to their equals, and to their immediate dependents, had 
no sense of what was due to the poor, to the middle, and 
the humbler classes generally. He could be touched by 
the sight of a captive king, or at the gallantly of the three 
French gentlemen ; but he had no ears to hear, no eyes 
to see, the cries and groans of the fathers, and mothers, 
and children, of the poorer citizens, who were not bound 
to him by the laws of honour and of knighthood. It is 
for us to remember, as we stand by his grave, that whilst 
he has left us the legacy of those noble and beautiful 
feelings, which are the charm and best ornaments of life, 
though not its most necessary virtues, it is our further 
privilege and duty to extend those feelings towards the 
classes on which he never cast a thought; to have 
towards all classes of society, and to make them have 
towards each other, and towards ourselves, the high 
respect, and courtesy, and kindness, which were then 
peculiar to one class only. 



THE TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 



339 



It is a well-known saying in Shakspeare, that— 

" The evil that men do lives after them ; 
The good is oft interred with their bones."— 

But it is often, happily, just the reverse, and so it was 
with the Black Prince. 

He was the first great English captain, who showed what 
English soldiers were, and what they could do against 
Frenchmen, and against all the world. He was the first 
English Prince who showed what it was to be a true 
gentleman. He was the first,- but he was not the last. 
We have seen how, when he died, Englishmen thought 
that all their hopes had died with him. But we know 
that it was not so ; we know that the life of a great nation 
is not bound up with the life of a single man ; we know 
that the valour and the courtesy and the chivalry of 
England, are not buried in the grave of the Plantagenet 
Prince. It needs only a glance round the country, to see 
that the high character of an English gentleman, of which 
the Black Prince was the noble pattern, is still to be found 
everywhere ; and has since his time been spreading itself 
more and more through classes, which in his time seemed 

incapable of reaching it And not to soldiers only, 

but to all who are engaged in the long warfare of life, is 
his conduct an example. To unite in our lives the two 
qualities expressed in his motto, " Hoch muth " and 
" Ich dien," " high spirit," and " reverent service " is to 

z 2 



340 



HISTORICAL. 



be, indeed, not only a true gentleman and a true soldier, 
but a true Christian also. To show to all who differ from 
us, not only in war but in peace, that delicate forbearance, 
that fear of hurting another's feelings, that happy art of 
saying the right thing to the right person, which he showed 
to the captive king, would indeed add a grace and a charm 
to the whole course of this troublesome world, such as 
none can afford to lose, whether high or low. Happy 
are they who, having this gift by birth or station, use it 
for its highest purposes ; still more happy are they, who 
having it not by birth or station, have acquired it, as it 
may be acquired, by Christian gentleness and Christian 
charity. 

And lastly, to act in all the various difficulties of 
our every day life, with that coolness, and calmness, and 
faith in a higher power than his own, which he showed 
when the appalling danger of his situation burst upon 
him at Poitiers, would smooth a hundred difficulties, 
and ensure a hundred victories. We often think we 
have no power in ourselves, no advantages of position, 
to help us against our many temptations, to overcome 
the many obstacles we encounter. Let us take our stand 
by the Black Prince's tomb, and go back once more in 
thought to the distant fields of France. A slight rise in 
the wild upland plain, a steep lane through vineyards and 
underwood, this was all that he had, humanly speaking, 



THE TOMB OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 34I 



on his side ; but he turned it to the utmost use of which 
it could be made, and won the most glorious of battles. 
So, in like manner, our advantages may be slight— hardly 
perceptible to any but ourselves— let us turn them to 
account, and the results will be a hundred-fold ; we have 
only to adopt the Black Prince's bold and cheering 
words, when first he saw his enemies, " God is my help, 
I must fight them as best I can /" adding that lofty, yet 
resigned and humble prayer, which he uttered when the 
battle was announced to be inevitable, and which has 
since become a proverb, " God defend the right." 

Memo rials oj Canterbury ; p. 153. 



DEDICATION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 



JI^IGHT hundred years have passed to-day since the 
dedication of Westminster Abbey was completed; 
when, like the Jewish Temple, it was purified, and 
adorned, and consecrated, in the place of the ruin and 
desolation which had well nigh swept away the vestiges 
of older times. 

These are the simple words of the Saxon Chronicle 
which describe this event : " At midwinter King Edward 
came to Westminster, and had the Minster there conse- 
crated, which he had himself built to the honour of God 
and St. Peter, and all God's Saints." It was at Christmas- 
time, when, as usual in that age, the Court assembled in 
the adjoining Palace of Westminster, that the long-desired 
dedication was to be accomplished. The king had been 
for years possessed with the thought. Like David, he 



DEDICATION OF WESTMINSTER ABEEY. 



343 



"could not suffer his eyes to sleep, nor the temples of 
his head to take any rest, until he had found out a place" 
for the great sanctuary which was henceforth to be the 
centre of his kingdom. 

On Christmas-day, according to custom, he appeared 
in state wearing his royal crown; but on Christmas-night 
his strength, prematurely exhausted, gave way. The 
mortal illness, long expected, set in. He struggled 
through the three next days, and though, when the Fes- 
tival of the Holy Innocents arrived, he was already too 
weak to take any active part in the ceremony, yet he 
aroused himself on that day, to sign the charter of the 
foundation; and at his orders the queen, with all the 
magnates of the kingdom, gathered within the walls, now 
venerable from age, then fresh from the workman's tools, 
to give to them the first consecration— the first which, 
according to the belief of that time, the spot had ever 
received from mortal hands. By that effort the enfeebled 
frame and over-strained spirit of the King was worn out. 
On the evening of Innocents'-Day he sank into a deadly 
stupor. The sudden and startling rally took place on 
the eighth day of his illness, on the 5th of January. The 
recollections of the teachers of his youth, the dim fore- 
bodings of approaching disaster and change, found vent 
in a few strange, hardly coherent sentences that burst 
from his lips. Then followed a calm, during which, 



344 



HISTORICAL. 



with words, very variously reported, respecting the Queen, 
the succession, and the hope that he was passing " from 
a land of death to a land of life," — in the chamber which 
long afterwards bore his name in the Palace of West- 
minster, — he breathed his last. A horror, it is described, 
as of great darkness, filled the whole island. With him it 
seemed as if the happiness, the liberty, the strength of 
the English People had vanished away. So dark were 
the forebodings, so urgent the dangers which appeared to 
press, that on the very next day, while Duke Harold was 
crowned in the old Cathedral of St. Paul's, the dead 
king was buried within the newly-finished Abbey — the 
first of the hundreds who have been since laid there 
round his own honoured grave. 

Let us see exactly what the character of Edward the 
Confessor was. On the one hand, if we look at the 
details of his history, it is hardly possible to imagine 
a figure more unlike, more incongruous to our own time 
than was this quaint, irresolute, guileless King, who alone, 
of all the canonized English saints, rests undisturbed in 
his ancient shrine. We know him well, as he is described 
to us by his contemporaries. We see that grave, gentle 
figure, old even as a child, moving slowly along with 
downcast eyes. We recognize him at a distance by the 
singular appearance of his full, flushed, rose-red face, con- 
trasted with the milky whiteness of his wavy hair and 



DEDICATION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 345 



beard. As we draw nearer, we hear those startling peals 
of strange unearthly laughter, which broke through his 
usual silence. We see those thin pale hands, those long 
transparent fingers, with which, as it was believed at the 
time, and for many generations afterwards, he had the 
power of stroking away the diseases of his subjects. We 
are astonished,-as we look into his outer manner of life, 
at finding a prince whose time is equally divided between 
devotional exercises and the passionate pursuit of hunt- 
ing — w hen not in Church, spending day after day with 
his hawks, or cheering on his hounds. We find, as we 
penetrate into his inner life, a childishness of thought 
and action, which at times turned into a harsh disregard 
of those to whom he was most nearly bound, and at 
times into the most fanciful extravagances. His opi- 
nions, his practices, his prevailing motives, are such as 
in our own times, not only not in England, but in no 
part of Christian Europe, would be shared by any edu- 
cated teacher or any educated ruler. But, through, and 
across, and in spite of these immeasurable divergences, 
we yet can recognize an innocent child-like faith, which 
was the secret cause of the charm exercised by him over 
his countrymen then, and which may flourish still in our 
altered age, and has always an appointed place in the 
economy of God's ever-moving world. It is to his faith 
in the unseen world, amidst whatever ignorance and 



34^ 



HISTORICAL. 



darkness, that we owe this complex structure. He spoke 
the word, and it was transformed into stone ; and even in 
some of its most peculiar features, the institution still 
perpetuates the thought of its first founder, "Through 
faith," we may well say, "he has stopped the mouth 
of Time, quenched the violence of enemies, escaped 
the edge of the sword, out of weakness been made 
strong." 

Sermons. 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



HE Castle of Bur, near Bayeux, was a place already 



famous in history as the scene of the interview 
between William and Henry, when the oath was perfi- 
diously exacted and sworn which led to the Conquest of 
England. Henry was here when all manner of rumours 
about Becket's proceedings reached his ears. He be- 
sought the advice of the three prelates — those of 
York, London, and Salisbury. The Archbishop of 
York answered cautiously, "Ask counsel from your 
barons and knights ; it is not for us to say what must be 
done." A pause ensued; and then it was added— 
whether by Roger or by some one else does not clearly 
a pp ear _" As long as Thomas lives, you will have neither 
good days, nor peaceful kingdom, nor quiet life." The 
words goaded the king into one of those paroxysms of 




348 



HISTORICAL. 



fury to which all the earlier Plantagenet princes were 
subject, and which was believed by themselves to arise 
from a mixture of demoniacal blood in their race. 
Henry himself is said at these moments to have become 
like a wild beast ; his eyes, naturally dove-like and quiet, 
seemed to flash lightning; his hands struck and tore 
whatever came in their way : on one occasion, he flew at 
a messenger who brought him bad tidings to tear out his 
eyes ; at another time he is represented as having flung 
down his cap, torn off his clothes, thrown the silk cover- 
let from his bed, and rolled upon it, gnawing the straw 
and rushes. Of such a kind was the frenzy he showed 
upon the present occasion. " A fellow," he exclaimed, 
" that has eaten my bread has lifted up his heel against 
me — a fellow that I loaded with benefits dares insult 
the King and the whole royal family, and tramples on the 
whole kingdom — a fellow that came to court on a lame 
horse, with a cloak for a saddle, sits without hindrance 
on the throne itself. What sluggard wretches," he burst 
forth again and again ; " what cowards have I brought 
up in my court, who care nothing for their allegiance to 
their master ! not one will deliver me from this low- 
born priest !" and, with these fatal words, he rushed out 
of the room. 

There were present among the courtiers four knights, 
whose names long lived in the memory of men, and 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



349 



every ingenuity was exercised to extract from them an 
evil augury of the deed which has made them famous — 
Reginald Fitzurse, "son of the Bear," and of truly 
" bear-like " character (so the Canterbury Monks repre- 
sented it) ; Hugh de Moreville, " of the city of death 
William de Tracy — a brave soldier, it was said, but " of 
parricidal wickedness Richard le Bret — more fit, they 
say, to have been called the " Brute." They are all 
described as on familiar terms with the king himself, and 
sometimes, in official language, as gentlemen of the bed- 
chamber These four knights left Bur on the night 

of the King's fury. They then, it was thought, proceeded 
by different roads to the French coast, and crossed the 
channel on the following day; and all four arrived at 
the same hour at the fortress of Saltwood Castle, now 
occupied by Becket's chief enemy, Dan Randolph of 
Broc, who came out to welcome them. In the darkness 
of the night — the long winter night of the 28th of De- 
cember — it was believed that, with candles extinguished, 
and not even seeing each other's faces, the scheme was 
concerted. Early in the morning of the next day they 
issued orders in the King's name for a troop of soldiers to 
be levied from the neighbourhood to march with them to 
Canterbury. They themselves mounted their chargers 
and galloped along the old Roman road from Lymne to 
Canterbury. They proceeded instantly to St. Augustine's 



350 



HISTORICAL. 



Abbey, outside the walls, and took up their quarters with 

Clarembald, the Abbot 

It was Tuesday the 29th of December. Tuesday, his 
friends remarked, had always been a significant day in 
Beckefs life. On a Tuesday he was born and baptized 
—on a Tuesday he had fled from Northampton— on a 
Tuesday he had left England on his exile— on a Tuesday 
he had received warning of his martyrdom in a vision at 
Pontigny— on a Tuesday he had returned from that 
exile— it was now on a Tuesday that the fatal hour came 
—and (as the next generation observed) it was on a 
Tuesday that his enemy King Henry was buried— on a 
Tuesday that the martyr's relics were translated— and 
Tuesday was long afterwards regarded as the week day 
especially consecrated to the saint, with whose fortunes 
it had thus been so strangely interwoven. Other omens 
were remarked. A soldier who was in the plot whispered 
to one of the cellarmen of the Priory that the Archbishop 
would not see the evening of Tuesday. Becket only 
smiled. A citizen of Canterbury had told him that there 
were several in England who were bent on his death j to 
which he answered, with tears, that he knew he should 
not be killed out of church. He himself had told seve- 
ral persons in France, that he was convinced he should 
not outlive the year, and in two days the year would be 
ended. 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



351 



Whether these evil auguries weighed upon his mind, 
or whether his attendants afterwards ascribed to his 
words a more serious meaning than they really bore, the 
day opened with gloomy forebodings. Before the break 
of dawn, the Archbishop startled the clergy of his bed- 
chamber by asking whether it would be possible for any- 
one to escape to Sandwich before daylight, and on being 
answered in the affirmative, added, " Let any one escape 
who wishes." That morning he attended mass in the 
cathedral ; then passed a long time in the chapter-house, 
confessing to two of the monks, and receiving, as seems 
to have been his custom, three scourgings. Then came 
the usual banquet in the great hall of the Palace at three 
in the afternoon. He was observed to drink more than 
usual, and his cup-bearer in a whisper reminded him of 
it. "He who has much blood to shed," answered 
Becket, " must drink much." 

The dinner was now over; the concluding hymn or 
" grace " was finished ; and Becket had retired to his 
private room, where he sat on his bed, talking with his 
friends ; whilst the servants, according to the practice 
which is still preserved in our old collegiate establish- 
ments, remained in the hall making their meal of the 
broken meat which was left. The floor of the hall was 
strewn with fresh hay and straw, to accommodate with clean 
places those who could not find room on the benches ; 



352 



HISTORICAL. 



and the crowd of beggars and poor, who daily received 

their food from the Archbishop, had gone into the outer 

yard, and were lingering before their final dispersion. It 

was at this moment that the four knights dismounted in 

the court before the hall, the doors were all open, 

and they passed through the crowd without opposition. 

Either to avert suspicion or from deference to the feeling 

of the time, which forbade the entrance of armed men 

into the peaceful precincts of the cathedral, they left 

i 

their weapons behind, and their coats of mail were con- 
cealed by the usual cloak and gown, the dress of ordinary 
life. One attendant, Radulf, an archer, followed them. 
They were generally known as courtiers ; and the ser- 
vants invited them to partake of the remains of the feast. 
They declined, and were pressing on, when, at the foot 
of the staircase leading from the hall to the Archbishop's 
room, they were met by William Fitz-Nigel, the seneschal, 
who had just parted from the Primate with a permission 
to leave his service, and join the King in France. 
When he saw the knights, whom he immediately recog- 
nized, he ran forward and gave them the usual kiss of 
salutation, and at their request ushered them to the room 
where Becket sate. " My lord," he said, " here are four 
knights from King Henry, wishing to speak to you." 
" Let them come in," said Becket. It must have been a 
solemn moment, even for those rough men, when they 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



353 



first found themselves in the presence of the Archbishop. 
Three of them — Hugh de Moreville, Reginald Fitzurse, 
and William de Tracy— had known him long before in 
the days of his splendour as Chancellor and favourite 
of the king. He was still in the vigour of strength, 
though in his fifty-third year ; his countenance, if we 
may judge of it from the accounts at the close of 
the day, still retained its majestic and striking aspect ; 
his eyes were large and piercing, and always glancing 
to and fro ; and his tall figure, though really spare and 
thin, had a portly look from the number of wrappings 
which he wore beneath his ordinary clothes. Round 
about him sat or lay on the floor the clergy of his 

household 

When the four knights appeared, Becket, without look- 
ing at them, pointedly continued his conversation with 
the monk who sate next him, and on whose shoulder he 
was leaning. They, on their part, entered without a word, 
beyond a greeting exchanged in a whisper to the attend- 
ant who stood near the door, and then marched straight 
to where the Archbishop sate, and placed themselves on 
the floor at his feet, among the clergy who were reclining 
around. Becket now turned round for the first time, and 
gazed stedfastly on each in silence, which he at last broke 
by saluting Tracy by name. The conspirators continued 
to look mutely at each other, till Fitzurse, who throughout 



354 



HISTORICAL. 



took the lead, replied, with a scornful expression, u God 
help you !" Becket' s face grew crimson, and he glanced 
round at their countenances, which seemed to gather fire 
from Fitzurse's speech. Fitzurse again broke forth — 
" We have a message from the King over the water- — tell 
us whether you will hear it in private or in the hearing of 
alL' , " As you wish," said the Archbishop. " Nay, as 
you wish," said Fitzurse. " Nay, as you wish," said 
Becket. The monks at the Archbishop's intimation 
withdrew into an adjoining room; but the doorkeeper 
ran up and kept the door ajar, that they might see from 
the outside what was going on. Fitzurse had hardly 
begun his message, when Becket suddenly struck with a 
consciousness of his danger, exclaimed, " This must not 
be told in secret," and ordered the doorkeeper to recall 
the monks. For a few seconds the knights were left 
alone with Becket ; and the thought occurred to them, as 
they afterwards confessed, of killing him with the cross- 
staff which lay at his feet — the only weapon within their 
reach. The monks hurried back, and Fitzurse, apparently 
calmed by their presence, resumed his statement of 
the complaints of the King. 

The Archbishop, in his turn, complained of the insults 
he had received. First came the grand grievances of the 
preceding week. " They have attacked my servants, they 
have cut off my sumpter-mule's tail, they have carried off 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



355 



the casks of wine that were the King's own gift." It was 
now that Hugh de Moreville, the gentlest of the four, put 
in a milder answer; "Why did you not complain to the 
King of these outrages ! Why do you take upon yourself 
to punish them by your own authority?" The Archbishop 
turned round sharply upon him ; M Hugh, how proudly you 
lift up your head i When the rights of the Church are 
violated, I shall wait for no man's permission to avenge 
them. I will give to the King the things that are the 
King's ; but to God the things that are God's. It is my 
business, and I alone will see to it." For the first time 
in the interview the Archbishop had assumed an attitude 
of defiance ; the fury of the knights broke at once through 
the bonds which had partially restrained it, and displayed 
itself openly in those impassioned gestures which are now 
confined to the half-civilised nations of the south and east, 
but which seem to have been natural to all classes of 
mediaeval Europe. Their eyes flashed fire ; they sprang 
upon their feet, and rushing close up to him, gnashed 
their teeth, twisted their long gloves, and wildly threw 
their arms above their heads. Fitzurse exclaimed, " You 
threaten us, you threaten us ; are you going to excom- 
municate us all ? " One of the others added, " As I hope 
for God's mercy, he shall not do that ; he has excommu- 
nicated too many already." The Archbishop also sprang 
from his couch, in a state of s#ong excitement. " You 

A A 2 



356 



HISTORICAL. 



threaten me," he said, " in vain ; were all the swords in 
England hanging over my head, you could not terrify me 
from my obedience to God, and my Lord the Pope. 
Foot to foot shall you find me in the battle of the Lord. 
Once I gave way. I returned to my obedience to the 
Pope, and will never more 'desert it. And besides you 
know what there is between you and me ; I wonder the 
more that you should thus threaten the Archbishop in his 
own house." He alluded to the fealty sworn to him 
while Chancellor by Moreville, Fitzurse, and Tracy, 
which touched the tenderest nerve of the feudal charac- 
ter. " There is nothing," they rejoined, with an anger 
which they doubtless felt to be just and loyal, " there is 
nothing between you and us which can be against the 
King." 

Roused by the sudden burst of passion on both sides, 
many of the servants and clergy, with a few soldiers of 
the household, hastened into the room, and ranged them- 
selves round the Archbishop. Fitzurse turned to them 
and said, "You are on the King's side, and bound to him 
by your allegiance, stand off." They remained motion- 
less, and Fitzurse called to them a second time, " Guard 
him; prevent him from escaping." The Archbishop 
said, " I shall not escape." On this the knights caught 
hold of their old acquaintance, William Fitz-Nigel, who 
had entered with the rest, and hurried him with them, 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



357 



saying, " Come with us." He called out to Becket, 
"You see what they are doing with me." "I see," 
replied Becket ; " this is their hour, and the power of 
darkness." As they stood at the door, they exclaimed, 
" It is you who threaten," and in a deep under-tone they 
added some menace, and enjoined on the servants obe- 
dience to their orders. With the quickness of hearing 
for which he was remarkable, he caught the words of 
their defiance, and darted after them to the door, entreat- 
ing them to release Fitz-Nigel ; then he implored More- 
ville, as more courteous than the others, to return and 
repeat their message ; and lastly, in despair and indig- 
nation, he struck his neck repeatedly with his hand, and 
said, " Here, here you will find me." 

The knights, deaf to his solicitations, kept their course, 
seizing as they went another soldier, Radulf Morin, and 
passed through the hall and court, crying, " To arms ! 
to arms 1" A few of their companions had already taken 
post within the great gateway, to prevent the gate being 
shut ; the rest, at the shout, poured in from the house 
where they were stationed hard by, with the watchword, 
"King's men! King's men!" The gate was instantly 
closed, to cut off communication with the town; the 
Archbishop's porter was removed. The knights threw ofi 
their cloaks and gowns under a large sycamore in the 
garden, appeared in their armour, and girt on their 



358 



HIST ORICAL. 



swords. Two of the Archbishop's servants seeing them 
approach, shut and barred the door of the hall, and the 
knights in vain endeavoured to force it open. Some one 
led them into the orchard behind the kitchen. There was 
a staircase leading thence to the ante-chamber, between 
the hall and the Archbishop's bed-room. The wooden 
steps were under repair, and the carpenters had gone to 
their dinner, leaving their tools on the stairs. Fitzurse 
seized an axe, and the others hatchets, and thus armed, 
they mounted the staircase to the ante-chamber, broke 
through an oriel window which looked out on the gar- 
den, entered the hall from the inside, attacked and 
wounded the servants who were guarding it, and opened 
the door to the assailants. The Archbishop's room was 
still barred and inaccessible. 

Meanwhile Becket, who resumed his calmness as soon 
as the knights had retired, reseated himself on his couch, 
and John of Salisbury again urged moderate counsels, in 
words which show that the estimate of the Archbishop in 
his lifetime justifies the impression of his vehement and 
unreasonable temper which has prevailed in later times. 
" It is wonderful, my Lord, that you never take any one's 
advice ; it always has been, and always is your custom, to 
do and say what seems good to yourself alone." " What 
would you have me do, Dan John?" said Becket. "You 
ought to have taken counsel with your friends, knowing 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



359 



as you do that these men only seek occasion to kill you." 
"I am prepared to die," said Becket. "We are sin- 
ners," said John, "and not yet prepared for death; and 
I see no one who wishes to die without cause except 
you." The Archbishop answered, "Let God's will be 
done." " Would to God it might end well," sighed John 
in despair. The dialogue was interrupted by one of the 
monks rushing in to announce that the knights were 
arming. "Let them arm," said Becket. But in a few 
minutes the violent assault on the door of the hall, an- 
nounced that danger was close at hand. The monks, with 
that extraordinary timidity which they always seem to 
have displayed, instantly fled, leaving only a small body 
of his intimate friends or faithful attendants. They 
united in entreating him to take refuge in the cathedral. 
"No!" he said; "fear not; all monks are cowards." 
On this some sprang upon him, and endeavoured to 
drag him there by main force ; others urged that it was 
now five o'clock, that vespers were beginning, and that 
his duty called him to attend the service. Partly forced, 
partly persuaded by the argument, partly feeling that his 
own doom called him thither, he rose and moved, but 
seeing that his cross-staff was not, as usual, borne before 

him, he stopped and called for it The whole 

march was a struggle between the obstinate attempt of the 
Primate to preserve his dignity, and the frantic eagerness 



360 



HISTORICAL. 



of his attendants to gain the sanctuary. As they urged 
him forward, he coloured and paused, and repeatedly 
asked them what they feared. The instant they had 
passed through the door which led to the cloister, the 
subordinates flew to bar it behind them, which he as 
peremptorily forbade. For a few steps he walked firmly 
on, with the crossbearer and the monks before him ; 
halting once, and looking over his right shoulder, 
either to see whether the gate was locked, or else if his 
enemies were pursuing. Then the same ecclesiastic who 
had hastened forward to break open the door, called out, 
" Seize him, and carry him !" Vehemently he resisted, 
but in vain. Some pulled him from before, others 
pushed him from behind; half carried, half drawn, he 
was borne along the northern and eastern cloister, crying 
out, " Let me go, do not drag me." Thrice they were 
delayed, even in that short passage, for thrice he broke 
loose from them — twice in the cloister itself, and once in 
the chapter-house. At last they reached the door at the 
lower north transept of the cathedral, and here was pre- 
sented a new scene. 

The vespers had already begun, and the monks were 
singing the service in the choir, when two boys rushed up 
the nave, announcing, more by their terrified gestures 
than by their words, that the soldiers were bursting into 
the palace and monastery. Instantly the service was 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



361 



thrown into the utmost confusion ; part remained at prayer 
— part fled into the numerous hiding-places the vast fabric 
affords ; and part went down the steps of the choir into 
the transept to meet the little band at the door. " Come 
in, come in!" exclaimed one of them; "come in, and 
let us die together." The Archbishop continued to 
stand outside, and said, "Go and finish the service. 
So long as you keep in the entrance, I shall not come 
in." They fell back a few paces, and he stepped within 
the door, but, finding the whole place thronged with 
people, he paused on the threshold and asked, "What 
is it that these people fear ?" One general answer broke 
forth, " The armed men in the cloister." As he turned 
and said, " I shall go out to them," he heard the clash of 
arms behind. The knights had just forced their way into 
the cloister, and were now (as would appear from their 
being thus seen through the open door) advancing along 
its southern side. They were in mail, which covered their 
faces up to their eyes, and carried their swords drawn. 
Three had hatchets. Fitzurse, with the axe he had taken 
from the carpenters, was foremost, shouting as he came, 
" Here, here, king's men !" Immediately behind him fol- 
lowed Robert Fitzranulph, with three other knights ; and 
a motley group, with weapons, brought up the rear. At 
this sight, so unwonted in the peaceful cloisters of Can- 
terbury, not probably beheld since the time when the 



362 



HISTORICAL. 



monastery had been sacked by the Danes, the monks 
within, regardless of all remonstrances, shut the door of 
the cathedral, and proceeded to barricade it with iron 
bars. A loud knocking was heard from the terrified 
crowd without, who, having vainly endeavoured to pre- 
vent the entrance of the knights into the cloister, now 
rushed before them to take refuge in the church. Becket, 
who had stepped some paces into the cathedral, but was 
resisting the solicitations of those immediately about him 
to move up into the choir for safety, darted back, calling 
aloud as he went, " Away, you cowards ! By virtue of 
your obedience I command you not to shut the door- — 
the church must not be turned into a castle." With his 
own hands he thrust them away from the door, opened 
it himself, and catching hold of the excluded monks, 
dragged them into the building, exclaiming, " Come in, 
come in — faster, faster !" 

At this moment the ecclesiastics who had hitherto 
clung around him fled in every direction ; some to the 
altars in the numerous side chapels, some to the secret 
chambers with which the walls and roof of the cathedral 
are filled. Three alone remained with him. Two hiding- 
places had been specially pointed out to the Archbishop. 
One was the venerable crypt of the church, with its 
many dark recesses and chapels, to which a door then as 
now opened immediately from the spot where he stood ; 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



363 



the other was the chapel of St. Blaise in the roof. But 
he positively refused. One last resource remained to 
the staunch companions who stood by him. They urged 
him to ascend to the choir, and hurried him, still resisting, 
up one of the two nights of steps which led thither. They 
no doubt considered that the greater sacredness of that 
portion of the church would form their best protection. 
Becket seems to have given way, as in leaving the palace, 
from the thought flashing across his mind that he would 
die at his post. He would go (such, at least, was the 
impression left on their minds) to the high altar, and 
perish in the Patriarchal Chair, in which he and all his 
predecessors from time immemorial had been enthroned. 
But this was not to be. 

What has taken long to describe must have been 
compressed in action within a few minutes. The 
knights, who had been checked for a moment by the 
sight of the closed door, on seeing it unexpectedly thrown 
open, rushed into the church. It was, we must remember, 
about five o'clock in a winter evening; the shades of 
night were gathering, and were deepened into a still 
darker gloom within the high and massive walls of the 
vast cathedral, which was only illuminated here and there 
by the solitary lamps burning before the altars. The 
twilight, lengthening from the shortest day a fortnight 
before, was but just sufficient to reveal the outline of 



3 6 4 



HISTORICAL. 



objects. The transept in which the knights found them- 
selves is the same as that which— though with considerable 
changes in its arrangements — is still known by its ancient 
name of "The Martyrdom." . „ . . . At the moment of 
their entrance the central pillar exactly intercepted their 
view of the Archbishop ascending the eastern staircase. 
Fitzurse, with his drawn sword in one hand, and the 
carpenter's axe in the other, sprang in first, and turned 
at once to the right of the pillar. The other three went 
round it to the left. In the dim twilight they could just 
discern a group of figures mounting the steps. One of 
the knights called out to them, "Stay." Another, "Where 
is Thomas Becket, traitor to the king ?" No answer was 
returned. Fitzurse rushed forward, and stumbling against 
one of the monks, on the lower step, still not able to 
distinguish clearly in the darkness, exclaimed, " Where is 
the Archbishop?" Instantly the answer came, — "Regi- 
nald, here I am, no traitor, but the Archbishop and Priest 
of God; what do you wish?"— and from the fourth step, 
which he had reached in his ascent, with a slight motion 
of his head — noticed apparently as his peculiar manner 
in moments of excitement — Becket descended to the tran- 
sept. Attired, we are told, in his white rochet, with a 
cloak and hood thrown over his shoulders, he thus sud- 
denly confronted his assailants. Fitzurse sprang back 
two or three paces, and Becket passing by him took up 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



365 



his station between the central pillar and the massive wall 
which still forms the south-west corner of what was then 
the chapel of St. Benedict. Here they gathered round 
him, with the cry, "Absolve the bishops whom you have 
excommunicated." "I cannot do other than I have 
done," he replied, and turning to Fitzurse, he added— 
"Reginald, you have received many favours at my hands ; 
why do you come into my church armed?" Fitzurse 
planted the axe against his breast, and returned for answer, 
"You shall die— I will tear out your heart." Another, 
perhaps in kindness, struck him between the shoulders 
with the flat of the sword, exclaiming, "Fly; you are a 
dead man." " I am ready to die," replied the Primate, 
"for God and the Church; but I warn you, I curse you 
in the name of God Almighty, if you do not let my men 
escape." 

The well-known horror which in that age was felt at an 
act of sacrilege, together with the sight of the crowds who 
were rushing in from the town through the nave, turned 
their efforts for the next few moments to carrying him out 
of the church. Fitzurse threw down his axe, and tried to 
drag him out by the collar of his long cloak, calling, 
" Come with us— you are our prisoner." " I will not fly, 
you detestable fellow," was Becket's reply, roused to his 
usual vehemence, and wrenching the cloak out of Fitzurse's 
grasp. The three knights struggled violently to put him 



3 66 



HISTORICAL. 



on Tracy's shoulders. Becket set his back against the 
pillar, and resisted with all his might. In the scuffle 
Becket fastened upon Tracy, shook him by his coat of 
mail, and exerting his great strength, flung him down on 
the pavement. It was hopeless to carry on the attempt 
to remove him. And in the final struggle, which now 
began, Fitzurse, as before, took the lead. But, as he 
approached with his drawn sword, the sight of him kindled 
afresh the Archbishop's anger, now heated by the fray ; 
the spirit of the Chancellor rose within him, and with a 
coarse epithet, not calculated to turn away his adversary's 
wrath, he exclaimed, " You profligate wretch, you are my 
man — you have done me fealty — you ought not to touch 
me." Fitzurse, glowing all over.with rage, retorted, " I 
owe you no fealty or homage, contrary to my fealty to the 
king," and, waving the sword over his head, cried "Strike, 
strike," but merely dashed off his cap. The Archbishop 
covered his eyes with his joined hands, bent his neck, and 
said, " I commend my cause, and the cause of the Church 
to God, to St. Denys the martyr of France, to St. Alfege, 
and to the saints of the Church." Meanwhile Tracy 
sprang forward and struck a more decided blow. Grim, 
one of the Archbishop's attendants, who up to this moment 
had his arm round Becket, threw it up, wrapped in a cloak, 
to intercept the blade, Becket exclaiming, "Spare this 
defence.'* The sword lighted on the arm of the monk, 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



and he fled disabled to the nearest altar. The spent force 
of the stroke descended on Becket's head, grazed the 
crown, and finally rested on his left shoulder. The next 
blow, by Tracy or Fitzurse, was only with the flat of the 
sword, and again on the bleeding head, which Becket 
drew back as if stunned, and then raised his clasped 
hands above it. The blood from the first blow was trickling 
down his face in a thin streak ; he wiped it with his arm, 
and when he saw the stain, he said, " Into thy hands, O 
Lord, I commend my spirit." At the third blow, which 
was also from Tracy, he sank on his knees —his arms 
falling— with his hands still joined as if in prayer. With 
his face turned towards the altar of St. Benedict, he mur- 
mured in a low voice, which might just have been caught 
by the wounded Grim, who was crouching close by, and 
who alone reports the words,—" For the name of Jesus, 
and the defence of the Church, I am willing to die." 
Without moving hand or foot, he fell flat on his face, as 
he spoke, in front of the corner wall of the chapel, and 
with such dignity that his mantle, which extended from 
head to foot, was not disarranged. In this posture he 
received from Richard the Breton a tremendous blow, 
accompanied with the exclamation (in allusion to a 
quarrel of Becket with Prince William), " Take this for 
love of my lord William, brother of the king." The stroke 
was aimed with such violence that the scalp or crown 



3 68 



HISTORICAL. 



of the head — which was of unusual size — was severed 
from the skull, and the sword snapt in two on the marble 
pavement. Then Hugh of Horsea, thrust his sword into 
the ghastly wound, and scattered the brains over the 
pavement. "Let us go — let us go," he said, in con- 
fusion; "the traitor. is dead; he will rise no more." 

This was the final act. One only of the four knights had 
struck no blow. Hugh de Moreville, throughout retained 
the gentler disposition for which he was distinguished, 
and contented himself with holding back at the entrance 
of the transept the crowds who were pouring in through 
the nave. 

The murderers rushed out of the church, through the 
cloisters, into the palace. Tracy, in a confession made 
long afterwards to the Bishop of Exeter, said that their 
spirits, which had before been raised to the highest pitch 
of excitement, gave way when the deed was perpetrated, 
and that they retired with trembling steps, expecting the 
earth to open and swallow them up. Such, however, 
was not their outward demeanour, as it was recollected 
by the monks of the place. With a savage burst of 
triumph they ran shouting, as if in battle, the watchword 
of the kings of England — " The king's men, the king's 
men j » — wounding as they went a servant of the Arch- 
deacon of Sens for lamenting the murdered prelate. 
They then traversed the whole of the palace, plundering 



THE MURDER OF 



BECKET. 



3 6 9 



gold and silver vases; the magnificent vestments, and 
utensils employed in the services of the church; and, 
lastly, the horses from the stables, on which Becket had 
prided himself to the last, and on which they rode off. 
The amount of plunder was estimated by Fitzstephen 
at 2000 marks. To their great surprise they found two 
haircloths among the effects of the Archbishop, and threw 
them away. As the murderers left the cathedral, a 
tremendous storm of thunder and rain burst over Can- 
terbury, and the night fell in thick darkness upon the 
scene of the dreadful deed. 

The crowd was every instant increased by the multi- 
tudes flocking in from the town on the tidings of the 
event. At last, however, the cathedral was cleared and 
the gates shut; and for a time the body lay entirely 
deserted. It was not till the night had quite closed in 
that Osbert, the chamberlain of the Archbishop, entering 
with a light, found the corpse lying on its face, the scalp 
hanging by a piece of skin : he cut off a piece of his shirt 
to bind up the frightful gash. The doors of the cathedral 
were again opened, and the monks returned to the spot. 
Then, for the first time, they ventured to give way to 
their grief, and a loud lamentation resounded through 
the stillness of the night. When they turned the body 
with its face upwards, all were struck by the calmness 
and beauty of the countenance : a smile still seemed to 

B B 



370 



HISTORICAL. 



play on the features — the colour on the cheeks was fresh 
— and the eyes were closed as if in sleep. The top of 
the head, wound round with Osbert's shirt, was bathed 
in blood, but the face was marked only by one faint 
streak that crossed the nose from the right temple to 
the left cheek. Underneath the body they found the 
axe which Fitzurse had thrown down, and a small iron 
hammer, brought, apparently, to force open the door; 
close by were lying the two fragments of Le Bret's 
broken sword, and the Archbishop's cap, which had been 
struck off in the beginning of the fray. All these they care- 
fully preserved. The blood, which, with the brains, was 
scattered over the pavement, they collected and placed 
in vessels ; and as the enthusiasm of the hour increased, 
the bystanders, who already began to esteem him a 
martyr, cut off pieces of their clothes to dip in the blood, 
and anointed their eyes with it. The cloak and outer 
pelisse, which were rich with sanguinary stains, were 
given to the poor — a proof of the imperfect apprehension 
as yet entertained of the value of these relics, which a 
few years afterwards would have been literally worth 
their weight in gold, and which were now sold for some 
trifling sum. 

After tying up the head with clean linen, and fastening 
the cap over it, they placed the body on a bier, and 
earned it up the successive flight of steps which led from 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 371 



the transept through the choir, to the high altar, in front 
of which they laid it down. The night was now far 
advanced, but the choir was usually lighted — and pro- 
bably, therefore, on this great occasion — by a chandelier 
with twenty-four wax tapers. Vessels were placed under- 
neath the body to catch any drops of blood that might 
fall, and the monks sat weeping around. The aged 
Robert, canon of Merton, the earliest friend and in- 
structor of Becket, and one of the three who had re- 
mained with him to the last, consoled them by a narration 
of the austere life of the murdered prelate, which hitherto 
had been only known to himself, as the confessor of 
the Primate, and to Brun the valet. In proof of it he 
thrust his hand under the garments, and showed the 
monk's habit and haircloth shirt which he wore next to his 
skin. This was the one thing wanted to raise the enthu- 
siasm of the bystanders to the highest pitch. Up to that 
moment there had been a jealousy of the elevation of 
the gay chancellor to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. 
Becket himself, it was believed, had immediately after 
his consecration received, from a mysterious apparition, 
an awful warning against appearing in the choir of the 
cathedral in his secular dress as chancellor. It now foi 
the first time appeared that, though not formerly a 
monk, he had virtually become one by his secret auste- 
rities. The transport of the fraternity, on finding that 

b b 2 



372 



HISTORICAL. 



ne had been one of themselves, was beyond all bounds. 
They burst at once into thanksgivings, which resounded 
through the choir ; fell on their knees ; kissed the hands 
and feet of the corpse, and called him by the name of 
" Saint Thomas," by which, from that time forward, he 
was so long known to the European world. At the sound 
of the shout of joy there was a general rush to the choir, 
to see the saint in sackcloth who had hitherto been 
known as the chancellor in purple and fine linen. A 
new enthusiasm was kindled by the spectacle ; Arnold, 
a monk, who was goldsmith to the monastery, was sent 
back, with others, to the transept to collect in a basin 
any vestiges of the blood and brains, now become so 
precious ; and benches were placed across the spot to 
prevent its being desecrated by the footsteps of the 
crowd. This perhaps was the moment that the great 
ardour of the citizens first began for washing their hands 
and eyes with the blood. One instance of its applica- 
tion gave rise to a practice which became the distinguish- 
ing characteristic of all the subsequent pilgrimages to 
the shrine. A citizen of Canterbury dipped a corner 
of his shirt in the blood, went home, and gave it, 
mixed in water, to his wife, who was paralytic, and who 
was said to have been cured. This suggested the notion 
of mixing the blood with water, which, endlessly diluted, 
was kept in innumerable vials, to be distributed to the 



THE MURDER OF BECKET. 



373 



pilgrims; and thus, as the palm was a sign of a pil- 
grimage to Jerusalem, and a scallop-shell of the pil- 
grimage to Compostella, so a leaden vial or bottle 
suspended from the neck became the mark of a pil- 
grimage to Canterbury. 

Thus passed the night ; and it is not surprising that 
in the red glare of an aurora borealis, which, after the 
stormy evening, lighted up the midnight sky, the ex- 
cited populace should fancy that they saw the blood 
of the martyr go up to heaven ; or that, as the wax- 
lights sank down in the cathedral, and the first streaks 
of the grey winter morning broke through the stained 
windows of Conrad's choir, the monks who sate round the 
corpse should imagine that the right arm of the dead 
man was slowly raised to the sign of the cross, as if to 
bless his faithful followers. 

Memorials of Canterbury, p. 69. 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



THE DEATH OF DR. ARNOLD. 



N Saturday morning, June nth, 1842, Dr. Arnold 



was busily employed in examining some of the boys 
in " Ranke's History of the Popes," in preparation for 
which he had sate up late on the previous night, and 
some of the answers which had much pleased him he 
recounted with great interest at breakfast. The chief 
part of the day he was engaged in finishing the busi- 
ness of the school, not accepting proffered assistance 
even in the mechanical details, but going through the 
whole work himself. He went his usual round of the 
school to distribute the prizes to the boys before their 
final dispersion, and to take care of those who were 
not returning after the holidays. " One more lesson," 
he had said, to his own Form on the previous even- 
ing, " I shall have with you on Sunday afternoon, and 




37& BIO GRAPHICAL. 



then I will say to you what I have to say." That parting 
address to which they were always accustomed to look 
forward with such pleasure, never came. But it is not to 
be wondered at, if they remarked with peculiar interest, 
that the last subject which he had set them for an ex- 
ercise was " Domus Ultima;" that the last translation for 
Latin verses was from the touching lines on the death of 
Sir Philip Sydney, in Spenser's " Ruins of Time — that 
the last words with which he closed his last lecture on 
the New Testament were in commenting on the passage 
of St. John : — " It doth not yet appear what we shall be ; 
but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like 
Him, for we shall see Him as He is." " So, too," he 
said, " in the Corinthians, ' For now we see through a 
glass darkly, but then face to face/ Yes," he added, 
with marked fervency, " the mere contemplation of Christ 
shall transform us into His likeness." 

In the afternoon he took his ordinary walk and bathe, 
enjoying the rare beauty of the day; while at dinner he 
was in high spirits, talking with his several guests on 
subjects of social or historical interest, and recurring 
with great pleasure to his early geological studies, and 
describing, with much interest, his recent visit to Naseby 
with Carlyle, " its position on some of the highest table 
land in England, — the streams falling on the one side into 
the Atlantic, on the other into the German Ocean, — far 



THE DEATH OF DR. ARNOLD. 



379 



away, too, from any town, — Market Harborough the 
nearest, into which the cavaliers were chased, late in the 
long summer evening, on the fourteenth of June, you 
know." 

At nine o'clock was a supper, which, on the last even- 
ing of the summer half-year, he gave to the Sixth Form 
boys of his own house ; and they were struck with the 
cheerfulness and liveliness of his manner, talking of the 
end of the half-year, and the pleasure of his return to 
Fox How in the next week, and observing, in allusion to 
the departure of so many boys, " How strange the Chapel 
will look to-morrow." 

The school business was now completely over. The 
old school-house servant, who had been about the place 
many years, came to receive the final accounts, and de- 
lighted afterwards to tell how his master had kept him a 
quarter of an hour talking to him with more than usual 
kindness and confidence. 

One more act, the last before he retired that night, 
remains to be recorded, — the last entry in his Diary, 
which was not known or seen till the next morning, when 
it was discovered by those to whom every word bore a 
weight of meaning, which he who wrote it had but little 
anticipated. 

"Saturday evening, June nth. — The day after to- 
morrow is my birthday, if I am permitted to live to see 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



it — my forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How 
large a portion of my life on earth is already passed. 
And then — what is to follow this life ? How visibly my 
outward work seems contracting and softening away into 
the gentler employments of old age. In one sense, how 
nearly can I now say ' Vixi.' And I thank God that, as 
far as ambition is concerned, it is, I trust, fully mortified ; 
I have no desire other than to step back from my present 
place in the world, and not to rise to a higher. Still 
there are works which, with God's permission, I would 
do before the night cometh ; especially that great work 
[of improving the intellectual management of Rugby], 
if I might be permitted to take part in it. But, above 
all, let me mind my own personal work, — to keep myself 
pure, and zealous, and believing, — labouring to do God's 
will, yet not anxious that it should be done by me rather 
than by others, if God disapproves of my doing it." 

It was between five and six o'clock on Sunday morn- 
ing that he awoke with a sharp pain across his chest, 
which he mentioned to his wife, on her asking whether 
he felt well, — adding that he had felt it slightly on the 
preceding day, before and after bathing. He then again 
composed himself to sleep ; but her watchful care, always 
anxious, even to nervousness, at the least indication of 
illness, was at once awakened, and on finding from him 
that the pain increased, and that it seemed to pass from 



THE DEATH OF DR. ARNOLD. 3 8 



his chest to his left arm, her alarm was so much roused 
from a remembrance of having heard of this in connexion 
with Angina Pectoris, and its fatal consequences, that 
in spite of his remonstrances, she rose and called up an 
old servant, whom they usually consulted in cases of 
illness, from her having so long attended the sick bed of 
his sister Susannah. Reassured by her confidence that 
there was no ground for fear, but still anxious, Mrs. 
Arnold returned to his room. She observed him as she 
was dressing herself, lying still, but with his hands 
clasped, his lips moving, and his eyes raised upwards, as 
if engaged in prayer, when all at once he repeated, firmly 
and earnestly, " And Jesus said unto him, Thomas, be- 
cause thou hast seen, thou hast believed ; blessed are 
they who have not seen, and yet have believed and 
soon afterwards, with a solemnity of manner and depth 
of utterance which spoke more than the words them- 
selves, " But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all 
are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons," 

From time to time he seemed to be in severe suffering; 
and, on the entrance of the old servant before mentioned, 
said, " Ah, Elizabeth, if I had been as much accustomed 
to pain as dear Susannah was, I should bear it better." 
To his wife, however, he uttered no expressions of acute 
pain, dwelling only on the moments of comparative ease, 
and observing that he did not know what it was. But 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



the more than usual earnestness which marked his tone 
and manner, especially in repeating the verses from Scrip- 
ture, had again aroused her worst fears ; and she ordered 
messengers to be sent for medical assistance, which he 
at first requested her not to do, from not liking to disturb 
at that early hour the usual medical attendant, who had 
been suffering from indisposition. She then took up the 
Prayer Book, and was looking for a Psalm to read to him, 
when he said quickly, " The fifty-first," — which she ac- 
cordingly read by his bed-side, reminding him, at the 
seventh verse, that it was the favourite verse of one of the 
old almswomen, whom he was in the habit of visiting ; 
and at the twelfth verse, " O give me the comfort of Thy 
help again, and stablish me with Thy free Spirit:" — he 
repeated it after her very earnestly. She then read 
the prayer in the " Visitation of the Sick," beginning 
" The Almighty Lord, who is a most strong tower," &c. 
kneeling herself at the foot of the bed, and altering it 
into a common prayer for them both. 

As the clock struck a quarter to seven, Dr. Bucknill 
(the son of the usual medical attendant) entered the 
room. He was then lying on his back, — his countenance 
much us usual, — his pulse, though regular, was very quick, 
and there was cold perspiration on the brow and cheeks. 
But his tone was cheerful. — "How is your father?" he 
asked, on the physician's entrance : "lam sorry to dis- 



THE DEATH OF DR. ARNOLD. 



3 8 3 



turb you so early, — I knew that your father was unwell, 
and that you had enough to do." He described the pain, 
speaking of it as having been very severe, and then said, 
" What is it ? " Whilst the physician was pausing for a 
moment before he replied, the pain returned, and re- 
medies were applied till it passed away ; and Mrs. Arnold, 
seeing by the measures used that the medical man was 
himself alarmed, left the room for a few moments to call 
up her second son, the eldest of the family then at 
Rugby, and impart her anxiety to him ; and during her 
absence, her husband again asked what it was, and was 
answered that it was spasm of the heart. He exclaimed, 
in his peculiar manner of recognition, " Ha ! " and then, 
on being asked if he had ever in his life fainted, — " No, 
never." If he had ever had difficulty in breathing ? — " No, 
never." If he had ever had sharp pain in the chest? 
" No, never." If any of his family had ever had disease 
of the chest ? — " Yes, my father had — he died of it." 
What age was he ? — " Fifty-three." Was it suddenly fatal ? 
— f* Yes, suddenly fatal." He then asked, " If disease of 
the heart was a common disease ? " — " Not very com- 
mon." "Where do we find it most ? " — " In large towns, I 
think." "Why?" — (Two or three causes were mentioned.) 
"'Is it generally fatal?" — "Yes, I am afraid it is." 

The physician then quitted the house for medicine, 
leaving Mrs. Arnold now fully aware from him of her 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



husband's state. At this moment she was joined by her 
son, who entered the room with no serious apprehension, 
and, on his coming up to the bed, his father, with 
his usual gladness of expression towards him, asked, — 
" How is your deafness, my boy ? " (He had been suf- 
fering from it the night before), — and then, playfully al- 
luding to an old accusation against him, " You must not 
stay here ; you know you do not like a sick room." He 
then sat down with his mother at the foot of the bed, 
and presently his father said in a low voice, " My son, 
thank God for me ; " and as his son did not at once 
catch his meaning, he went on saying, — " Thank God, 
Tom, for giving me this pain ; I have suffered so little 
pain in my life, that I feel it is very good for me ; now 
God has given it to me, and I do so thank him for it." 
And again, after a pause, he said, — alluding to a wish 
which his son had often heard him express, that if he ever 
had to suffer pain, his faculties might be unaffected by 
it, — " How thankful I am that my head is untouched." 
Meanwhile his wife, who still had sounding in her ears 
the tone in which he had repeated the passage from 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, again turned to the Prayer 
Book, and began to read the Exhortation in which it 
occurs in the "Visitation of the Sick." He listened with 
deep attention, saying emphatically, — " Yes," at the 
end of many of the sentences. "There should be 



THE DEATH OF DR. ARNOLD. 385 



no greater comfort to Christian persons than to be 
made like unto Christ."— " Yes." " By suffering patiently 
troubles, adversities, and sickness."— "Yes." " He en- 
tered not into His glory before He was crucified."— 
"Yes." At the words "everlasting life" she stopped, 
and his son said,—" I wish, dear Papa, we had you 
at Fox How." He made no answer, but the last 
conscious look, which remained fixed in his wife's 
memory, was the look of intense tenderness and love 
with which he smiled upon them both at that moment. 

The physician now returned with the medicines, and 
the former remedies were applied : there was a slight 
return of the spasms, after which he said,—" If the pain 
is again as severe as it was before you came, I do not 
know how I can bear it" He then, with his eyes fixed 
upon the physician, who rather felt than saw them upon 
him, so as to make it impossible not to answer the exact 
truth, repeated one or two of his former questions about 
the cause of the disease, and ended with asking, " Is it 
likely to return?" and, on being told that it was, "Is it 
generally suddenly fatal?"— "Generally." On being 
asked whether he had any pain, he replied that he had 
none, but from the application of the external remedies ; 
and then, a few moments afterwards, inquired what 
medicine was to be given ; and on being told, answered, 
" Ah, very well." The physician, who was dropping the 

c c 



386 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



laudanum into a glass, turned round, and saw him looking 
quite calm, but with his eyes shut. In another minute 
he heard a rattle in the throat, and a convulsive struggle, 
—flew to the bed, caught his head upon his shoulder, and 
called to one of the servants to fetch Mrs. Arnold. She 
had but just left the room before his last conversation 
with the physician, in order to acquaint her son with his 
father's danger, of which he was still unconscious, when 
she heard herself called from above. She rushed up- 
stairs, told her son to bring the rest of the children, and 
with her own hands applied the remedies that were 
brought, in the hope of reviving animation, though her- 
self feeling, from the moment that she saw him, that he 
had already passed away. He was indeed no longer 
conscious. The sobs and cries of his children as they 
entered and saw their father's state, made no impression 
upon him— the eyes were fixed— the countenance was 
unmoved : there was a heaving of the chest— deep gasps 
escaped at prolonged intervals,— and just as the usual 
medical attendant arrived, and as the old school-house 
servant, in an agony of grief, rushed with the others 
into the room, in the hope of seeing his master once 
more, he breathed his last 

It must have been shortly before eight a.m. that he 
expired, though it was naturally impossible for those who 
were present to adjust their recollections of what passed 



THE DEATH OF DR. 



ARNOLD. 



387 



with precise exactness of time or place. So short and 
sudden had been the seizure, that hardly any one out of 
the household itself had heard of his illness before its fatal 
close. His guest, and former pupil, (who had slept in a 
remote part of the house,) was coming down to breakfast 
as usual, thinking of questions to which a conversation of 
the preceding night had given rise, and which, by the 
great kindness of his manner, he felt doubly encouraged 
to ask him, when he was met on the staircase by the 
announcement of his death. The masters knew nothing 
till the moment, when, almost at the same time at the 
different boarding-houses, the fatal message was delivered, 
in all its startling abruptness, "that Dr. Arnold was dead." 
What that Sunday was in Rugby, it is hard fully to repre- 
sent ; the incredulity — the bewilderment — the agitated 
inquiries for every detail — the blank, more awful than 
sorrow, that prevailed through the vacant services of that 
long and dreary day — the feeling as if the very place had 
passed away with him who had so emphatically been in 
every sense its head — the sympathy which hardly dared 
to contemplate, and which yet could not but fix the 
thoughts and looks of all on the desolate house, where 
the fatherless family were gathered round the chamber of 
death. 

Five of his children were awaiting their father's arrival 
at Fox How. To them the news was brought on Monday 

CC2 



388 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



morning, by the same pupil who had been in the house 
at his death, and who long would remember the hour 
when he reached the place, just as the early summer 
dawn — the dawn of that forty-seventh birthday — was 
breaking over that beautiful valley, every shrub and every 
flower in all its freshness and luxuriance speaking of him 
who had so tenderly fostered their growth around the 
destined home of his old age. On the evening of that 
day, which they had been fondly preparing to celebrate 
with its usual pleasures, they arrived at Rugby in time to 
see their father's face in death. 

He was buried on the following Friday, the very day 
week, since, from the same house, two and two in like 
manner, so many of those who now joined in the funeral 
procession to the chapel, had followed him in full health 
and vigour to the public speeches in the school. It was 
attended by his whole family, by those of his friends and 
former pupils who had assembled from various parts 
during the week, and by many of the neighbouring clergy 
and of the inhabitants of the town, both rich and poor. 
The ceremony was performed by Mr. Moultrie, Rector of 
Rugby, from that place which, for fourteen years, had 
been occupied only by him who was gone, and to whom 
every part of that Chapel owed its peculiar interest ; and 
his remains were deposited in the chancel, immediately 
under the Communion-table. 



THE DEATH OF DR. ARNOLD. 



389 



Once more his family met in the Chapel on the following 
Sunday, and partook of the Holy Communion at his 
grave, and heard read the sermon preached by him, in 
the preceding year, on " Faith triumphant in Death." 
And yet one more service in connexion with him took 
place in the Chapel, when, on the first Sunday of the next 
half-year, the school, which had dispersed on the eve of 
his death, assembled again within its walls, under his 
successor, and witnessed in the funeral services with 
which that day was observed, the last public tribute of 
sorrow to their departed master. 

Life of Dr. Arnold, ii. p. 279. 



CONSTANTINE. 



HE Emperor Constantine is one of the few to whom 



has been awarded the name of "Great." Though this 
was deserved rather by what he did, than by what he 
was « — though he was great, not among the first charac- 
ters of the world, but among the second; great like 
Philip, not like Alexander ; great like Augustus, not like 
Csesar ; great with the elevation of Charlemagne or Eliza- 
beth, not with the genius or passion of Cromwell or of 
Luther j — yet this gives us a stronger sense of what the 
position was which could of itself confer such undoubted 

grandeur on a character less than the highest 

But there is a profound interest in Constantine's im- 
perfect complex character, which renders it peculiarly 
interesting as a subject of theological study. Over his 
virtues and vices the Pagans and Christians quarrelled 




CONSTANTINE. 39 1 



during his lifetime. Nor is his life without a special 
connection with the history of our own Church. To 
English students I cannot forbear recalling that he was, 
if not our fellow-country man by birth, yet unquestion- 
ably proclaimed Emperor in the Praetorium at York. 
He probably never visited our shores again. Yet the 
remembrance of that early connection long continued. 
It shaped itself into the legend of his British birth, of 
which, within the walls of York, the scene is still shown. 
His father's tomb was pointed out in York till the sup- 
pression of the monasteries. His mother's name lives 
still in the numerous British churches dedicated to her. 
London Wall was ascribed to him. 

As he appeared in the council of Nicaea— handsome, 
tall, stout, broad-shouldered— he was a high specimen of 
one of the coarse military chiefs of the declining Empire. 
When Eusebius first saw him, as a young man, on a journey 
through Palestine before his accession, all were struck by 
the sturdy health and vigour of his frame ; and Eusebius 
perpetually recurs to it, and maintains that it lasted till 
the end of his life. In his later days his red complexion 
and somewhat bloated appearance gave countenance to 
the belief that he had been affected with leprosy. His 
eye was remarkable for a brightness, almost a glare, 
which reminded his courtiers of that of a lion. He had 
a contemptuous habit of throwing back his head, which, 



392 



BIOGRAP H ICAL. 



by bringing out the full proportions of his thick neck, 
procured for him the nickname of Trachala. His voice 
was remarkable for its gentleness and softness. In dress 
and outward demeanour the military commander was 
almost lost in the variety and affectation of Oriental 
splendour. The spear of the soldier was almost always in 
his hand, and on his head he always wore a small helmet. 
But the helmet was studded with jewels, and it was 
bound round with the Oriental diadem, which he, first 
of the Emperors, made a practice of wearing on all occa- 
sions. His robe was remarked for its unusual magnifi- 
cence. It was always of the Imperial purple or scarlet, 
and was made of silk, richly embroidered with pearls 
and flowers worked in gold. He was specially devoted 
to the care of his hair, ultimately adopting wigs of false 
hair of various colours, and in such profusion as to make 
a marked feature on his coins. First of the Emperors, 
since Hadrian, he wore a short beard. 

He was not a great man, but he was by no means an 
ordinary man. Calculating and shrewd as he was, yet 
his worldly views were penetrated by a vein of religious 
sentiment, almost of Oriental superstition. He had a 
wide view of his difficult position as the ruler of a divided 
Empire and divided Church. He had a short dry 
humour which stamps his sayings with an unmistakable 
authenticity, and gives us an insight into the cynical 



CONSTANTINE. 



393 



contempt of mankind which he is said to have combined, 
by a curious yet not uncommon union, with an inordinate 
love of praise. He had the capacity of throwing himself, 
with almost fanatical energy, into whatever cause came 
before him for the moment. We have seen from his 
dress, and we see also from his language, that he was 
not without the wretched affectation which disfigured the 
demeanour of the later Emperors. Against one great 
old Roman vice, that of voracious gluttony, he struggled, 
but struggled in vain. It was only as despotic power 
and Eastern manners made inroads into the original 
self-control of his character that he was betrayed into 
that disregard of human life, in his nearest and dearest 
relationships, which, from the same causes, darkened the 
declining years of the Grecian Alexander, and the Eng- 
lish Henry 

Every student of ecclesiastical history must pause for 
a moment before the conversion of Constantine. No 
conversion of such magnitude had occurred since the 
apostolic age. None such occurred again till the baptism 
of the several founders of the Teutonic and Sclavonic 
kingdoms. 

Like all such events, it had its peculiar prepara- 
tions, and took its peculiar colouring from the cir- 
cumstances of the time and the character of the man. 
He had the remembrance of his father Constantius— just 



394 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



such a " devout " believer in Divine Providence as we 
find so common in the Roman army several generations 
earlier, in the many good centurions of the New Testa- 
ment. He had a lively recollection of the Christian 
arguments used before Diocletian. His rival Maxentius 
was a fierce fanatical Pagan, armed with magical arts, as 
was supposed, against which any counter supernatural 
influences were much to be cherished. He was approach- 
ing Rome for the first time, and was filled with the awe 
which that greatest of earthly cities inspired in all who 
named its name, or came within its influence. It is 
needless to repeat at length the story which Eusebius 
gives on the testimony of the Emperor himself. That 
he was in prayer on his march ;— that " about noon, 
as the day was declining," a flaming cross appeared in 
the sky with the words, "In this conquer ;"— that in 
the night which followed he saw in a dream the figure of 
Christ bearing a standard, such as in Christian pictures 
is represented in the Descent to the departed spirits; 
—that on consultation with Christian clergy in the 
camp he adopted this sacred banner instead of the 
Roman eagles, and professed himself a disciple of the 
Christian faith. There are various versions of the story 
given, materially different from this, but it is clear that 
some such change, effected by some such means, took 
place at this crisis ; and this idea is confirmed by the fact, 



CONSTANTINE. 



395 



not only of Constantine's adoption of the Christian faith 
immediately afterwards, but by the specific introduction 
of the standard of the cross into the army. 

And it is indisputable, that from that hour he went 
steadily forward in the main purpose of his life, that of 
protecting and advancing the cause of the Christian 
religion. Julian's face was not set more steadily back- 
wards, than was Constantine's steadily forwards. The 
one devoted himself to the revival of that which had 
waxed old, and was ready to vanish away ; the other to the 
advancement of that which year by year was gaining 
in strength and life. 

It is not necessary to do more than enumerate the acts 
of Constantine's ecclesiastical legislation, in order to see 
the vastness of the revolution of which he was the 
leader. 

In the year 313 was issued the Edict of Toleration. 
Then followed, in rapid succession, the decree for the 
observance of Sunday in the towns of the Empire, 
the use of prayers for the army, the abolition of the 
punishment of crucifixion, the encouragement of the 
emancipation of slaves, the discouragement of infanticide, 
the prohibition of private divinations, the prohibition of 
licentious and cruel rites, the prohibition of gladiatorial 
games. Every one of these steps was a gain to the 
Roman Empire and to mankind, such as not even the 



396 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



Antonines had ventured to attempt, and of those benefits 
none has been altogether lost. Undoubtedly, if Con- 
stantine is to be judged by the place which he occupies 
amongst the benefactors of humanity, he would rank, not 
amongst the secondary characters of history, but amongst 
the very first. And here we may quote the striking 
remarks of Niebuhr — " Many judge of Constantine by 
too severe a standard, because they regard him as a 
Christian ; but I cannot look upon him in that light. The 
religion which he had in his head must have been a 

strange jumble indeed He was a superstitious 

man, and mixed up his Christian religion with all kinds 
of superstitions and opinions. When certain Oriental 
writers call him 6 equal to the Apostles,' they do not 
know what they are saying ; and to speak of him as a 

saint is a profanation of the word." 

What his personal convictions may have been, in 
regard to the peculiar doctrines which he successively 
attacked and defended, it is impossible to determine. 
But we cannot doubt his sincere interest in some at least 
of the questions which were raised. Like his nephew 
Julian, although with a far ruder education and less fan- 
tastic mind, he threw himself into the disputations of the 
time as a serious business of Imperial state. Not only 
did he at the festival of Easter spend the night in 
prayer with every appearance of devotion, and even 



CONSTANTINE. 



397 



preside at the most sacred ceremonies, but he alternately, 
as student or teacher, took part in Christian preaching. 
If he did listen to the sermons of others, it was regarded 
as an act of the highest condescension. Eusebius has 
left us an account of one which he himself delivered to 
" the marvellous man," as he calls him, on the Church 
of the Holy Sepulchre. It was in the Palace. There 
was a crowded audience. The Emperor stood erect the 
whole time ; would not be induced to sit down on the 
throne close by ; paid the utmost attention ; would not 
hear of the sermon being too long ; insisted on its con- 
tinuance ; and, on being again entreated to sit down, 
replied, with a frown, that he could not bear to hear the 
truths of religion in any easier posture. More often he 
was himself the preacher. One such sermon has been 
preserved to us by Eusebius. These sermons were always 
in Latin ; but they were translated into Greek by inter- 
preters appointed for the purpose. On these occasions 
a general invitation was issued, and thousands of people 
flocked to the Palace to hear the Emperor turn preacher. 
He stood erect ; and then, with a set countenance and 
grave voice, poured forth his address; to which, at the 
striking passages, the audience responded with loud 
cheers of approbation, the Emperor vainly endeavouring 
to deter them by pointing upwards, as if to transfer the 
glory from himself to Heaven. 



398 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



He usually preached on the general system of the 
Christian Revelation ; the follies of Paganism ; the Unity 
and Providence of God; the scheme of redemption; 
the judgment; and then attacked fiercely the avarice 
and rapacity of the courtiers, who cheered lustily, but did 
nothing of what he had told them. On one occasion he 
caught hold of one of them, and drawing on the ground 
with his spear the figure of a man, said : " In this 
space is contained all that you will cany with you after 
death." 

If Constantine was intoxicated by his success at Nicsea, 
and by the enthusiasm of his ecclesiastical admirers, he 
can hardly be blamed. It is, probably, to this and to the 
demoralizing influences of his Oriental habits, that we must 
ascribe the melancholy fact that he was, by general con- 
sent, a worse prince at the close of his reign than at its 
beginning, when he was little better than a Pagan. . . . 

There is no act of the life of Constantine so deeply 
instructive as his death. It was Easter, in the year 
337. In the Church of the Apostles at Constanti- 
nople he had passed the night, with more than his usual 
devotion, in preparation for his Persian expedition. An 
illness supervened ; he went to Helenopolis to try the 
mineral waters in the neighbourhood. The illness in- 
creased ; a sinister suspicion of poison stole through the 
palace. He felt that it was mortal, and now at last he 



CON STAN TINE. 



399 



determined on taking the step, long delayed, but not 
yet impossible, of admission to the Christian Church. 

Incredible as it may seem to our notions, he who had 
five and twenty years ago been convinced of the Christian 
faith ; he who had opened the first General Council of 
the Church; he who had called himself a Bishop of 
Bishops; he who had joined in the deepest discussions 
of theology ; he who had preached to rapt audiences ; 
he who had established Christianity as the religion of the 
empire ; he who had been considered by Christian bishops 
an inspired oracle and apostle of Christian wisdom, was 
himself not yet received into the Christian Church. He 
was not yet baptized; he had not even been re- 
ceived as a catechumen. He, like many of his country- 
men, united, after his conversion, a sincere belief 
in Christianity with a lingering attachment to Paganism. 
— He, like some even of the noblest characters in 
the Christian Church, regarded baptism, much as the 
Pagans regarded the lustrations and purifications of 
their own religion, as a complete obliteration and ex- 
piation of all former sins ; and therefore, partly from a 
superstitious dread, partly from the prudential desire, not 
peculiar to that or any age, "of making the best of both 
worlds," he would naturally defer the ceremony to the 
moment when it would include the largest amount of the 
past, and leave the smallest amount of the future. To 



4<X) 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



him, as to all Christians of those times, baptism still 
preserved much of its original significance, which it has 
inevitably lost in the course of ages. It was still re- 
garded as the solemn passage from one state of life to 
another ; from the darkness and profligacy of the heathen 
world to the light and purity of the Christian society ; a 
step taken, not as the natural accompaniment of birth 
and education, but as a serious pledge of conviction and 
of profession. 

The whole event is related in the utmost detail. In 
the Church at Helenopolis, in the unusual posture of 
devotion, that of kneeling, he was admitted to be a 
catechumen by the imposition of hands. He then 
moved to a palace in the suburb of Nicomedia, and 
then calling the bishops around him, announced that 
once he had hoped to receive the purification of baptism, 
after our Saviour's example, in the streams of the Jordan ; 
but God's will seemed to be that it should be here, and 
he therefore requested to receive the rite without delay. 
" And so," says his biographer, " alone of Roman em- 
perors from the beginning of time, was Constantine con- 
secrated to be a witness of Christ in the second birth of 
baptism." The imperial purple was at last removed ; he 
was clothed instead in robes of dazzling whiteness ; his 
couch was covered with white also ; in the white robes 
of baptism, on a white death-bed he lay, in expectation 



CONSTANTINE. 4OI 



of his end His own delight at the accomplish- 

ment of the ceremony was excessive; and when the 
officers of his army entered the chamber of death, with 
bitter lamentations, to make their last farewell, he bade 
them rejoice in his speedy departure heavenwards. At 
noon, on Whit-Sunday, the 22nd of May, in the sixty- 
fourth year of his age, and the thirty-first of his reign, he 
expired. A wild wail of grief arose from the army and the 
people, on hearing that Constantine was dead. The 
body was laid out in a coffin of gold, and carried by a 
procession of the whole army, headed by his son Con- 
stans, to Constantinople. For three months it lay there 
in state in the palace, lights burning round, and guards 
watching. During all this time the Empire was without 
a head. All went on as though he were yet alive. 
One dark shadow from the great tragedy of his life 
reached to his last end, and beyond it. It is said that 
the Bishop of Nicomedia, to whom the Emperor's will 
had been confided by Eustocius, alarmed at its contents, 
immediately placed it for security in the dead man's 
hand, wrapped in the vestments of death. There it lay 
till Constantius arrived, and read his father's dying be- 
quest. It was believed to express the Emperor's dying 
conviction that he had been poisoned by his brothers 
and their children, and to call on Constantius to avenge 
his death. That bequest was obeyed by the massacre of 

D D 



402 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



six out of the surviving princes of the imperial family. 
Two alone escaped. With such a mingling of light and 
darkness did Constantine close his career. 

When the tidings reached Rome, the old metropolis 
steadily ignored the revolution that had passed over the 
world in the person of the deceased Emperor. He was 
regarded but as one in the series of the Caesars. He was 
enrolled, like his predecessors, as a matter of course, 
amongst the gods of the heathen Olympus. Incense 
was offered before his statue. A picture of his apo- 
theosis was prepared. Festivals were celebrated in his 
honour. 

But in his own Christian city of Constantinople he 
had himself arranged the altered celebration of his death. 
Not amongst the gods and heroes of heathenism, but 
amongst those who now seemed to him the nearest ap- 
proach to them, the Christian Apostles, his lot was to be 
cast. He had prepared for his mausoleum a church, 
sometimes, like that which he had founded at Rome, 
called the " Church of St. Peter," but more usually the 
" Church of the Apostles." 

Thither the body was borne. Constantius was now 
present ; and as it reached the church the prince (for he 
too was still an unbaptized catechumen) withdrew with 
the Pagan guards, and left the Imperial corpse alone, as 
it lay aloft in the centre of the church in its sarcophagus 



CONSTANTINE. 



403 



of porphyry. Prayers were offered for his soul j he was 
placed amongst the Apostles ; and he formally received 
the names which he had borne in life, and which then 
became so purely personal that they descended to his 
sons, " Victor, Maximus, Augustus." 

So passionate was the attachment of the people of Con- 
stantinople to the tomb of their founder, that the attempt 
to remove it for safety to another church whilst its own 
was being prepared, provoked a sanguinary riot. The 
church became the royal burial-place of the Byzantine 
emperors. There they all lay in imperial state till in 
the fourth crusade the coffins were rifled and the bodies 
cast out. 

So passed away the first Christian Emperor — the first 
Defender of the Faith— the first Imperial patron of the 
Papal See, and of the whole Eastern Church — the first 
founder of the Holy Places — Pagan and Christian, 
orthodox and heretical, liberal and fanatical, not to be 
imitated or admired, but much to be remembered and 
deeply to be studied. 

Eastern Church, p. 185. 



D D 2 



IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 



TV If OSCOW, that marvellous city, is the very personifi- 
cation of the ecclesiastical history of Russia. It 
is indeed a personification of it even in the literal sense. 
(i Our holy mother, Moscow," is the peasants' endearing 
name for the city ; nay, even for the road which leads to 
it, " our dear Mother, the great road from Vladimir to 
Moscow." Hallowed by no Apostolic legends, not even 
by any Byzantine missions ; cleared out of the forests 
which down to the fourteenth century overhung, and still 
have their names on, the banks of the Moskwa ; with no 
other attractions than its central situation in the heart of 
the Russian Empire, it has yet acquired a hold over the 
religious mind of a larger part of Christendom, than is 
probably exercised by any other city except Jerusalem 
and Rome. Look at its forest of towers and domes, 



IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 



springing like gaudy flowers or weeds — blue, red, green, 
silver, golden — from the wide field of green roofs, and 
groves, and gardens. It is a very Russian Rome, no 
doubt ; but still, like it, the city of innumerable churches, 
of everlasting bells, of endless processions, of palace and 
church combined, of tombs and thrones, and relics and 
treasures, and invasions and deliverances, as far back as 
its history extends. Look further at the concentration 
of all this in the Kremlin. In that fortress, surrounded 
by its crusted towers and battlemented walls, are united 
all the elements of the ancient religious life of Russia. 
Side by side stand the three Cathedrals of the marriages, 
coronations, and funerals of the Czars. Hard by are the 
two convents, half palatial, half episcopal. Overhanging 
all is the double, triple palace of Czar and Patriarch. 
Within that palace is a labyrinth of fourteen chapels, 
multiplied by sovereign after sovereign, till the palace is 
more like the dwelling place of the Pope than of the 
Emperor ; whilst the Tartar-like building in which these 
chapels are embedded, itself crabbed, ribbed, low-browed, 
painted within and without in the old barbaric gro- 
tesqueness of mediaeval Russia, is encased with the ex- 
ternal magnificence of modern civilisation and European 

grandeur 

The political position of the Czar or Emperor is not 
within our province, but his religious or ecclesiastical 



406 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



position transpires through the whole history of his 
church. He is the father of the whole patriarchal com- 
munity. The veneration for him was in the middle 
ages almost, it is said, as if he were Christ Himself. 
The line of Grecian Emperors, so it was said even by 
Orientals, had been stained with heresy and iconoclasm : 
never the line of the orthodox Czars of Muscovy. " He 
who blasphemes his Maker meets with forgiveness 
amongst men, but he who reviles the Emperor is sure to 
lose his head." " God and the Prince will it, God and 
the Prince know it," were the two arguments, moral and 
intellectual, against which there was no appeal. "So 
live your Imperial Majesty, here is my head ;" "I have 
seen the laughing eyes of the Czar :" — these were the 
usual expressions of loyalty. He was the keeper of the 
keys, and the body-servant of God. His coronation, 
even at the present time, is not a mere ceremony, but an 
historical event and solemn consecration. It is pre- 
ceded by fasting and seclusion, and takes place in the 
most sacred church in Russia ; the Emperor, not as in 
the corresponding forms of European investiture a pas- 
sive recipient, but himself the principal figure in the 
whole scene ; himself reciting aloud the confession of the 
Orthodox faith ; himself alone on his knees, amidst the 
assembled multitude, offering up the prayer of interces- 
sion for the Empire ; himself placing his own crown with 



IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 



his own hands on his own head ; himself entering 
through the sacred doors of the innermost sanctuary, and 
taking from the altar the elements of the bread and wine, 
of which then and there, in virtue of his consecration, he 
communicates with bishops, priests, and deacons. In 
every considerable church is placed a throne in front of 
the altar, as if in constant expectation of the sudden 
apparition of the Sovereign. In every meeting, council, 
or college, is placed the sacred triangular " mirror," " the 
mirror of conscience," as it is called, which represents 
the Imperial presence, and solemnizes, as if by an actual 
consecration, the business to be transacted. 

In the cathedral of the Archangel Michael, within the 
Kremlin, lie, each in his place, their coffins ranged 
around the wall, the long succession of Czars, from the 
founder of Moscow to the predecessor of the founder of 
Petersburg. Round the walls, above each coffin, are the 
figures painted in long white robes, each with a glory 
round his head, not the glory of saintly canonisation, but 
of that Imperial canonisation of which I have just 
spoken. Twice a year a funeral service is performed for 
the souls of all of them. Of all those who there lie 
buried, under " that burden of sins," — so the service 
solemnly expresses it, — " voluntary or involuntary, known 
to themselves or unknown," — none more strangely and 
significantly indicates the mixed character of the Russian 



408 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



Czar, or the hold which the office had acquired on the 
people, than he who, as the first crowned and anointed 
Czar of Muscovy, lies next the altar, in the most sacred 
place, Ivan or John IV., surnamed "The Terrible." 

Without dwelling on the details of his life, his career 
has a dramatic interest of its own, unlike that of most of 
the great tyrants of the world. From a youth of bar- 
barous profligacy he was reclaimed suddenly, and, as it 
would seem, entirely, by the joint efforts of his wife Anas- 
tasia, of the monk Sylvester, and of the noble x\dasheff. 
For thirteen years under their influence he led not only 
a pure and good life, but a career of brilliant success 
long unknown in the Russian annals. " It was as if a 
cloud which had before concealed Russia from the eyes 
of Europe was suddenly drawn asunder, and revealed to 
them at the moment of their greatest need, against the 
aggressive power of the Ottoman Empire, a young 
Christian hero at the head of a great empire, to be the 
vanguard and support of Christendom.' , But this was 
only transient. At the end of thirteen years these good 
influences were partly withdrawn and partly crushed. 
He returned once more to far worse than his youthful 
crimes ; insanity blended itself with furious passion, and, 
although sparks of religion still remained, at times burst- 
ing forth into fervent devotion, although noble schemes 
of civilization hovered before his mind always, and kept 



IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 



409 



his name in sight before the Western world, yet, if we 
may believe half the crimes laid to his charge, he stands 
unrivalled, at least amongst Christian sovereigns, in his 
pre-eminence of wickedness. 

He is the first Russian prince who comes into direct 
contact with the West. He corresponded with and 
courted our own Elizabeth. It is interesting to reflect 
that probably he was the first great political personage 
who claimed and who received the promise of the right 
of asylum in England, in case of a revolution in his own 
country. There is something almost Shakespearian in 
the delineation which Sir Jerome Horsey (an English- 
man) gives of the last time he saw the tremendous Em- 
peror : — ■ 

" God would not leave this cruelty and barbarism un- 
punished. Not long after, he, the Emperor, fell out 
in rage with his eldest son, Charrowich [the Czarovitch] 
Ivan, for having some commiseration of those distressed 
poor Christians ; and but for commanding an officer to 
give a gentleman a warrant for 5 or 6 post-horses, 
sent in his affairs, without the king's leave, and some 
other jealousy of greatness and too good opinion of the 
people as he thought, strake him in his fury a box on the 
ear or thrust at him with his piked staff ; who took it so 
tenderly, fell into a burning fever, and died within three 
days after. Whereat the Emperor tore his hair and 



4io 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



beard like a madman, lamenting and mourning for the 
loss. of his son. But the kingdom had the greatest loss, 
the hope of their comfort, a wise, mild, and most worthy 
prince, of heroical condition, of comely presence, twenty- 
three years of age, beloved and lamented of all men, 
was buried in Michaela Sweat (S. Michael)- Archangel 
church, with jewels, precious stones, and apparel, put 
into his tomb with his corpse, worth 50 thousand pounds, 
watched by twelve citizens every night by change, dedi- 
cated unto his Saint John and Michael Archangel, to 
keep both body and treasure. . . . The old Emperor was 
carried every day in his chair into his treasury. One 
day he beckoned me to follow. I stood among the rest 
venturously, and heard him call for some precious stones 
and jewels. Told the Prince and nobles present before 
and about him the vertue of such and such, which I 
observed, and do pray I may a little digress to declare 
for my own memory's sake. 

" 6 The load-stone,' he said, ' you all know hath great 
and hidden virtue, without which the seas that compass 
the world are not navigable, nor the bounds nor circle 
of the earth cannot be known. 

" ' Behold these precious stones ; this diamond is the 
Orient's richest and most precious of all other. I never 
affected it ; it restrains fury and luxury, [gives ?] abstinence 
and chastity ; the least parcel of it in powder will poison 



IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 



a horse given to drink, much more a man ! '—Points at 
the ruby. ' O ! this is most comfortable to the heart, 
brain, vigour, and memory of man, clarifies congealed 
and corrupt blood.'— Then at the emerald. 'The nature 
of the rainbow : this precious stone is an enemy to un- 
cleanness. The sapphire I greatly delight in; it pre- 
serves and increaseth courage, joys the heart, pleasing to 
all the vital senses, precious and very sovereign for the 

eyes.' Then takes the onyx in hand. 'All these are 

God's wonderful gifts, secrets in nature, and yet reveals 
them to man's use and contemplation, as friends to grace 
and virtue, and enemies to vice. ... I faint, cany me away 
till another time.' 

" In the afternoon peruseth over his will and yet thinks 
not to die: he hath been bewitched in that place, 
and often times unwitched again ; but now the devil 
fails. Commands the master of his apotheke and 
physicians to prepare and attend for his solace and 
bathing : looks for the goodness of the sign : sends his 
favourite to his witches again to know their calculations. 
The day is come; he is at heart whole as ever he 
was. About the third hour, went into his bath, solaced 
himself, and made merry with pleasant songs as he 
useth to do ; came out about the seventh hour well re- 
freshed ; sets him down upon his bed ; calls a gentleman 
whom he favoured, to bring the chess-board. He sets his 



412 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



men • all saving the king, which by no means he could 
not make stand in his place with the rest upon the plain 
board : his chief favourite and others about him. The 
Emperor, in his loose gown, shirt and linen hose, faints 
and falls backward. Great outcry and stir. One sent 
for aqua vitse, another to the apotheke for ' marigold and 
rose water,' and to call ' his ghostly father' and the physi- 
cians. In the meantime he was strangled and stark 
dead.' , 

Louis XI. is a standing disgrace to the Roman Church. 
Antinomianism is the reproach of the lower and coarser 
forms of the Protestant Church. But these instances are 
exceeded both in the depth of their wickedness and the 
fervour of their zeal, by Ivan the Terrible. A single 
passage out of many will suffice. He retired sometimes 
for weeks together to a monastery, which he had built 
for himself near Moscow. He rang the bell for matins 
himself at three in the morning. During the services, 
which lasted seven hours, he read, chanted, and prayed 
with such fervour that the marks of his prostrations re- 
mained on his forehead. At dinner, whilst his attendants 
sat like mutes, he read books of religious instruction. In 
the intervals, he went to the dungeons under the monas- 
tery to see with his own eyes his prisoners tortured, and 
always returned, it was observed, with a face beaming 
with delight. ..... 



IVAN THE TERRIBLE. 4'3 



But, moreover, terrible, loathsome, wide -spread 
as were his crimes and cruelties, he reigned not 
only without personal danger, but almost, it may be 
said, with personal popularity. When he offered to 
abdicate, when he drove off from the Kremlin in 
his sledges to his retreat at Alexandroff, the people 
were in despair. What would have seemed to us a 
deliverance beyond all hope seemed to them a calamity 
beyond all endurance. They could not live without a 
Czar; and when, as a Czar, he returned, to mangle, tor- 
ture, and dishonour his subjects, he died, not by the 
hand of any assassin, but in the agonies of his own re- 
morse. In foreigners, even then, he excited dread and 
indignation ; and the English merchant describes how he 
« was sumptuously entombed in the Archangel church, 
where he, though guarded day and night, remains a 
fearful spectacle to the memory of such as pass by, 01 
hear his name spoken of, who were entreated to cross 
and bless themselves for his resurrection again." But 
this feeling was one, with his own countrymen, not of 
unmingled horror. The epithet which we render " Ter- 
rible," in the original, expresses rather the idea of 
" Awful," the feeling with which the Athenians would 
have regarded, not Periander or Dionysius, but the 
Eumenides. His memory still lives amongst the peasants 
as of one who was a Czar indeed. The stories of his 



414 



BIOGRAPHICAL. 



nailing the hat of the ambassador to his head, and of 
his driving his huge iron walking-staff through the foot 
of one whose attention he wished to secure, are re- 
garded rather as the playful condescension of some great 
Leviathan, than as the unfeeling cruelties of a wicked 
prince. 

Easte?'u Church, p. 317. 



EXPOSITORY. 



DAVID AND HIS PSALTER. 



HE position of David is virtually that of the 



Founder of the Jewish Monarchy. In this sense 
his name is repeated in every possible form. "The 
city of David,"— " The seed of David,"— "The house of 
David," — " The key of David,"—" The oath sworn unto 
David," — are expressions which pervade the whole subse- 
quent history and poetry of the Old Testament, and 
much of the figurative language of the New. The 
cruelty, the self-indulgence, the too-ready falsehood, suffi- 
ciently appear in the events of his history. But there 
was a grace, a charm about him, which entwined the 
affections of the nation round his person and his 
memory, and made him, in spite of the savage manners 
of the time and the wildness of his own life, at once the 
centre of something like a court, the head of a new 




E E 



4i8 



EXPOSITORY. 



civilization. He was a born King of Israel by his natural 
gifts. His immense activity and martial spirit united 
him by a natural succession to the earlier chiefs of 
Israel, whilst his accomplishments and genius fitted him 
especially to exercise a vast control over the whole 
future greatness of the Church and commonwealth. 

The force and passion of the ruder age was blended 
with a depth of emotion which broke out in every rela- 
tion of life. Never before had there been such a faithful 
friend, such an affectionate father. Never before had 
king or chief inspired such passionate loyalty, or given 
it back in equal degree. The tenderness of his per- 
sonal affection penetrated his public life. He loved his 
people with a pathetic compassion, beyond even that of 
Moses. Even from the history we gather that the ancient 
fear of God was, for the first time, passing into the love 
of God 

He is the "man after God's own heart," not in the 
sense of a faultless saint — far from it, even according to 
the defective standard of Jewish morality; still further 
from it, if we compare him with the Christianity of a 
civilized age ; but in the sense of the man who was 
chosen for his own especial work — the work of pushing 
forward his nation into an entirely new position, both 
religious and social. 

But the hold which David has fixed on the memory of 



DAVID AND HIS PSALTER. 419 



the Church and the world is of a deeper kind than any 
which he derives even from the romance of his life or 
the attractiveness of his character. He was not only the 
Founder of the Monarchy but the Founder of the Psalter. 
He is the first great Poet of Israel. Although before his 
time there had been occasional bursts of Hebrew poetry, 
yet David is the first who gave it its fixed place in the 
Israelite worship. There is no room for it in the Mosaic 
ritual. Its absence there may be counted as a proof 
of the antiquity of that ritual in all its substantial fea- 
tures. For so mighty an innovation no less than a 
David was needed. That strange musical world of the 
East, — with its gongs, and horns, and pipes, and harps 
— with its wild dances and wilder contortions — with 
its songs of question and answer, of strophe and anti- 
strophe, awakening or soothing, to a degree incon- 
ceivable in our tamer West, the emotions of the hearer, 
were seized by the shepherd minstrel, when he mounted 
the throne, and were formed as his own peculiar province 
into a great ecclesiastical institution. The exquisite 
richness of verse and music so dear to him — " the calves 
of the lips' — took the place of the costly offerings of 
animals. His harp — or as it was called by the Greek 
translators, his "psaltery" or "psalter" or guitar — was 
to him what the wonder-working staff was to Moses, the 
spear to Joshua, or the sword to Gideon. It was with 

e e 2 



420 



EXPOSITORY. 



him in his early youth. It was at hand in the most 
moving escapes of his middle life. In his last words, he 
seemed to be himself the instrument over which the 
Divine breath passed. United with those poetic powers 
was a grace so nearly akin to the Prophetic gift, that he 
has received the rank of a Prophet, though not actually 

trained or called to the office By these gifts 

he became in his life, and still more in his writings, a 
Prophet, a Revealer of a new world of religious truth, 
only inferior, if inferior, to Moses himself. 

The Psalter, thus inaugurated, opened a new door into 
the side of sacred literature. Hymn after hymn was 
added, altered, accommodated, according to the need of 
the time. And not only so, but under the shelter of this 
irregular accretion of hymns of all ages and all occasions, 
other books, which had no claim to be considered either 
of the Law or of the Prophets, forced an entrance, and 
were classed under the common title of " The Psalms," — 
though including books as unlike to each other and to the 
"Psalter" as Ruth and Ecclesiastes, Chronicles and 
Daniel. But, even without reckoning these accompani- 
ments, the Book of Psalms is, as it were, a little Bible in 
itself. It is a Bible within a Bible ; in which most of the 
peculiarities, inward and outward, of the rest of the 
sacred volume are concentrated. As, on the one hand, we 
gratefully acknowledge the single impulse which brought 



DAVID AND HIS PSALTER. 



421 



the book into existence, we recognise no less, on the 
other hand, the many illustrious poets whose works 
underneath that single name have come down to us, 
unknown, yet hardly less truly the offspring of David's 
mind than had they sprung directly from himself. 

The Psalter, thus freely composed, has further become 
the Sacred Book of the world in a sense belonging to no 
other part of the Biblical records. Not only does it 
hold its place in the Liturgical services of the Jewish 
Church, not only was it used more than any other part of . 
the Old Testament by the writers of the New, but it is in 
a special sense the peculiar inheritance of the Christian 

Church through all its different branches 

And if we descend from Churches to individuals, there 
is no one book which has played so large a part in 
the history of so many human souls. By the Psalms, 
Augustine was consoled on his conversion, and on 
his death-bed. By the Psalms, Chrysostom, Athana- 
sius, Savonarola were cheered in persecution. With the 
words of a Psalm, Polycarp, Columba, Hildebrand, 
Bernard, Francis of Assisi, Huss, Jerome of Prague, 
Columbus, Henry the Fifth, Edward the Sixth, Ximenes, 
Xavier, Melancthon, Jewell, breathed their last. So 
dear to Wallace in his wanderings was his Psalter, that, 
during his execution, he had it hung before him, and his 
eyes remained fixed upon it as the one consolation of his 



422 



EXPOSITORY. 



dying hours. The unhappy Darnley was soothed in the 
toils of his enemies by the 55th Psalm. The 68th 
cheered Cromwell's soldiers to victory at Dunbar. 
Locke in his last days bade his friends read the Psalms 
aloud, and it was whilst in rapt attention to their words 
that the stroke of death fell upon him. Lord Burleigh 
selected them out of the whole Bible as his special de- 
light. They were the frame-work of the devotions and 
of the war-cries of Luther ; they were the last words 
that fell on the ear of his imperial enemy Charles the 

Fifth 

There are doubtless occasions when the Psalmist 
speaks as the organ of the nation. But he is for the 
most part alone with himself and with God. Each word 
is charged with the intensity of some grief or joy, known 
or unknown. The doctrines of David strike home and 
kindle a fire wherever they light, mainly because they 
are the sparks of the incandescence of a living human 
experience like our own. The Patriarchs speak as the 
Fathers of the chosen race ; the Prophets speak as its 
representatives and its guides. But the Psalmist speaks 
as the mouth-piece of the individual soul, of the free, 
independent, solitary conscience of man everywhere. 
Then there is the perfect naturalness of the Psalms. It 
appears, perhaps, most forcibly in their exultant freedom 
and joyousness of heart. The one Hebrew word which is 



DAVID AND HIS PSALTER. 



423 



their very pith and marrow is " Hallelujah." They ex- 
press, if we may so say, the sacred duty of being happy. 
Be happy, cheerful, and thankful, as ever we can, we 
cannot go beyond the Psalms. They laugh, they shout, 
they cry, they scream for joy. There is a wild exhilara- 
tion which rings through them. They exult alike in the 
joy of battle, and in the calm of nature. They see God's 
goodness everywhere. They are not ashamed to con- 
fess it. The bright side of creation is everywhere up- 
permost ; the dark, sentimental side is hardly ever seen. 
The fury of the thunder-storm, the roaring of the sea, are 
to them full of magnificence and delight. Like the- 
Scottish poet [Sir Walter Scott] in his childhood, at each 
successive peal they clap their hands in innocent plea- 
sure. The affection for birds, and beasts, and plants, 
and sun, and moon, and stars, is like that which St. 
Francis of Assisi claimed for all these fellow-creatures of 
God, as his brothers and sisters. There have been those 
for whom, on this very account, in moments of weakness 
and depression, the Psalms have been too much : yet 
not the less in this vein of sacred merriment valuable in 
the universal mission of the Chosen People. And the 
more so because it grows out of another feeling in the 
Psalms, which has also jarred strangely on the minds of 
devout but narrow schools, "the free and princely heart 
of innocence" which to modern religion has often 



424 



EXPOSITORY. 



seemed to savour of self- righteousness and want of 
proper humility. The Psalmist's bounding, buoyant 
hope, his fearless claim to be rewarded according to his 
righteous dealing, his confidence in his own integrity no 
less than his agony over his own crimes, his passionate 
delight in the Law, not as a cruel enemy but as the 
best of guides, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb 
— these are not according to the requirements of Calvin 
or even of Pascal : they are from a wholly different 
point of the celestial compass than that which inspired 
the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. But they 
have not the less a truth of their own, a truth to Nature, 
a truth to God, which the human heart will always 
recognise. The frank unrestrained benediction on the 
upright honest man, " the noblest work of God," with 
which the Psalter opens, is but the fitting prelude to the 
boundless generosity and prodigality of joy with which 
in its close it calls on "every creature that breathes," 
without stint or exception, to "praise the Lord." It 
may be that such expressions as these owe their first 
impulse in part to the new epoch of national prosperity 
and individual energy ushered in by David's reign ; but 
they have swept the mind of the Jewish nation onward 
towards that mighty destiny which awaited it ; and they 
have served, though at a retarded speed, to sweep on, 
ever since, the whole spirit of humanity in its upward 



DAVID AND HIS PSALTER. 



425 



course. " The burning stream has flowed on after the 
furnace itself has cooled." As of the classic writers of 
Greece, it has been well said that they possess a charm 
quite independent of their genius, in the radiance of 
their brilliant and youthful beauty, so it may be said of 
the Psalms that they possess a like charm, independent 
even of their depth of feeling or loftiness of doctrine. 
In their free and generous grace the youthful, glorious 
David seems to live over again with a renewed vigour, 
" All our fresh springs " are in him and in his Psalter. 

Jewish Church, ii. 14.^. 



THE CORINTHIANS. 



^ORINTH, at the time of the Christian era, was very 



different from the city of which we read in the nar- 
ratives of Thucydides and Xenophon. When the native 
vigour of the other states of Greece had been broken by 
the general submission to Alexander and his successors, 
Corinth rose at once to that eminence to which the 
strength of her position as the key of the Peloponnesus, 
and the convenience of her central situation for purposes 
of communication and commerce, would naturally have 
procured for her. Accordingly, the last glory of the 
Martinmas summer of Greece, in the days of the Achaean 
League, was shed almost exclusively on Corinth. Here 
the nominal independence of Greece was proclaimed 
by Flamininus. Here also descended the final blow 
by which that show of freedom was destroyed by 




THE CORINTHIANS. 427 



Mummius. The greatness of the closing history of Corinth 
is best attested by the greatness of its fall. The triumph 
of Mummius was the most magnificent which the temple 
of Capitoline Jove had ever witnessed. As a storehouse 
of Grecian art and civilization, it seems to have been held 
equal to Athens itself. For months and years, it became 
the quarry from which the Roman nobles adorned their 
villas with marbles, paintings, and statues. The mass of 
gold, silver, and bronze, melted down in the general con- 
flagration, was so great that the rich material formed from 
it was currently known in the empire under the name of 
" Corinthian brass." A still stronger proof of the import- 
ance of the city was furnished by the precautions which 
the conquerors took against its again becoming the centre 
of that national life of which it had been the last home. 
The inhabitants were entirely disarmed, and, for a 
hundred years, it was literally a city of ruins. 

The recollection of its greatness in the last days of 
Greece, as well as the natural advantages of its situation, 
caused Julius Caesar to select it as the site of a Roman 
settlement, which he established under the title of 
" Colonia Julia Corinthus," or " Laus Juli Corinthus," in 
the same year (b.c. 46), in which, in pursuance of his 
usual policy, he founded a similar colony at Carthage. 

This " New Corinth " accordingly became, like its pre- 
decessor, but by a more direct and formal acknowledge- 



428 



EXPOSITORY. 



ment, the capital of the whole of the Southern division 
of the Roman province of Greece, known by the name of 
"Achaea," 

This peculiarity in the political position of Corinth, 
which naturally drew the steps of the Apostle to its walls, 
lerids a peculiar interest to the two Epistles addressed to 
its inhabitants. When labouring there, he was labouring 
not merely for Corinth, but for the great people of which 
. it was now the representative ; the Epistles which he wrote 
to the Christians of Corinth were, in fact, Epistles to the 
whole Greek nation : they included within their range, not 
merely Corinth the Capital, but Athens, the university, of 
Greece ; and spoke not only to those who had listened 
to him in the house of Justus and Gaius, or the syna- 
gogue of Crispus, but to those who had heard him 
beneath the shade of the Acropolis or on the rock- 
hewn seats of the Areopagus. In the Epistles to the 
Corinthians we are allowed to witness the earliest 
conflict of Christianity with the culture and the vices 
of the ancient classical world ; here we have an insight 
into the principles which regulated the Apostle's choice 
or rejection of the customs of that vast fabric of 
heathen society which was then emphatically called "the 
world j " here we trace the mode in which he combated 
the false pride, the false knowledge, the false liberality, 
the false freedom, the false display, the false philosophy 



THE CORINTHIANS. 



429 



to which an intellectual age, especially in a declining 
nation, is constantly liable ; here, more than anywhere 
else in his writings, his allusions and illustrations are 
borrowed not merely from Jewish customs and feelings, 
but from the literature, the amusements, the education, 
the worship of Greece and of Rome. It is the Apostle 
of the Gentiles, as it were, in his own peculiar sphere, in 
the midst of questions evoked by his own peculiar mis- 
sion, watching over churches of his own creation ; " if 
not an Apostle to others, doubtless to them/' not pulling 
down, but building up, feeling that on the success of his 
work then, the whole success and value of his past and 
future work depended. "The seal of his Apostleship 
were they in the Lord.'* 

It is important to bear in mind this general character 
of the Corinthian Church, in order that we may appreciate 
more particularly the peculiar circumstances under which 
the Epistles were written. It is not necessary to describe 
at length the outward aspect which the city of Corinth 

presented at the time of St. Paul We know to a 

certain extent what it was, from the detailed description of 
it by Pausanias, one hundred years later. At present one 
Doric temple alone remains of all the splendid edifices 
then standing ; but the immediate vicinity presents various 
features to which the Apostle's allusions have given an 
immortal interest. The level plain, and the broken 



430 



EXPOSITORY. 



gullies of the isthmus, are still clothed with the low pine, 
from whose branches of emerald green were woven the 
garlands for the Isthmian games, contrasted by the 
Apostle with the unfading crown of the Christian comba- 
tant. In its eastern declivities are to be seen the vestiges 
of that " stadium," in which all ran with such energy 
as to be taken as the example of Christian self-denial and 
exertion. On the outskirts of the city may be traced 
the vast area of the amphitheatre, which conveyed to the 
Corinthians a lively image of the Apostle's " fightings 
with beasts," or of his " being set forth as the last in the 
file of combatants appointed unto death," a spectacle to 
the world, to angels, and to men. We have but to restore 
those now desolate spots with the long avenues of statues, 
and the white marble seats on the grassy slope of the 
hill, and the temples, whose beauty made the name of 
Corinthian buildings proverbial for magnificence, and 
which, standing as they did in their ancient glory amidst 
the new streets erected by Caesar on the ruins left by 
Mummius, may well have suggested the comparison of 
the " gold, silver, and precious 6 marbles,' " surviving the 
conflagration, in which all meaner edifices of wood and 
thatch had perished. It is not so easy to imagine the 
internal as the external aspect of the city. That it was 
again a flourishing town is clear, though no doubt less 
remarkable for its wealth than in its earlier days 



43i 



With the confluence of strangers and of commerce, 
were associated the luxury and licentiousness, which gave 
the name of Corinth an infamous notoriety, and which, 
connected as they were in the case of the Temple of 
Aphrodite with religious rites, sufficiently explains the 
denunciations of sensuality to which the Apostle gives 
utterance in these Epistles more frequently and elabo- 
rately than elsewhere. On the other hand, it was cele- 
brated for maintaining the character of a highly polished 
and literary society, such as furnishes a natural basis for 
much both of the praise and blame with which the first 
epistle abounds in regard to intellectual gifts. " At 
Corinth, you would learn and hear even from inanimate 
objects," — so said a Greek teacher, within a century from 
this time, — " so great are the treasures of literature in 
every direction, wherever you do but glance, both in the 
streets themselves, and in the colonnades ; not to speak 
of the gymnasia and schools, and the general spirit of 
instruction and inquiry." 

Thus far it was merely the type of a Greek commercial 
city, such as might have existed in the earlier ages of 
Grecian history — and such it was at the time when the 
Apostle entered its walls. From the wealthy and luxu- 
rious inhabitants themselves, that visit could have attracted 
but little attention. A solitary Eastern traveller (for St. 
Paul was alone when he arrived) would be lost at once in 



432 



EXPOSITORY. 



the constant ebb and flow of strangers crossing each 
other at the Isthmus. But by the Apostle his arrival 
must have been regarded as of supreme importance. It 
was the climax, so to speak of the second, and in some 

respects the greatest, of his journeys 

It is not necessary to dwell at length on the details of 
his preaching, further than as they illustrate his general 
conduct and the allusions of these Epistles. Here, 
as elsewhere, he first turned to his own country- 
men. It was, apparently, the absence of a Jewish syna- 
gogue at Athens, as a basis of operation, that made 
his sojourn there so intolerable to him. The house of 
Aquila and Priscilla, always (i Cor. xvi. 19) open to 
strangers, provided him with an abode; and there, in 
company with them, he maintained himself by manual 
labour in the trade of tent-making, which he had learned 
in his childhood in his native city. For some weeks he 
taught in the synagogue, apparently as a Jew; warned, 
perhaps, by his experience in the Northern Cities, of the 
danger of exciting an opposition from the Jews before 
he had established a firm footing. But, on the arrival of 
his two companions from Macedonia, probably with the 
tidings of the zeal of the Thessalonian Christians, which 
incited him to write to them his two earliest Epistles, — 
he could no longer restrain himself, " he was pressed in 
the spirit," and "testified to the Jews that Jesus was the 



THE CORINTHIANS. 



433 



Messiah." Instantly the same hostile demonstrations, 
the same burst of invective, which he had encountered 
at Thessalonica and Bercea, broke out in Corinth also. 
But he was now determined to stand his ground ; and, 
instead of giving way to the storm and leaving the place, 
he fulfilled the precept of the Gospel, partly in the letter 
(Matt. x. 14), partly in the spirit ; he stood up in the syna- 
gogue, and, in the face of his indignant countrymen, shook 
out from his robes the dust, not of the city, where he de- 
termined now more than ever to remain, but of the syna- 
gogue, which he was determined now finally to abandon, 
and, leaving the responsibility on themselves, declared his 
intention of " going henceforth to the Gentiles." He had 
not far " to go." Hard by the synagogue itself, was the 
house of a proselyte, Justus, which he turned immediately, 
so to speak, into a rival synagogue. His congregation con- 
sisted partly of the Jews who were struck by his teaching, 
amongst whom was to be reckoned Crispus, the ruler of 
the synagogue, whom he baptized with his own hands: 
But it included the increasing number of Gentile con- 
verts, amongst whom the household of Stephanas were 
the earliest. In the midst of this mixed audience he 
" sat," after the manner of the Rabbis, and taught with 
unabated fervour " the Cross of Christ." The only further 
interruption he sustained from the hostility of his 
countrymen was the tumult, headed by Sosthenes, 

F F 



434 



EXPOSITORY. 



the successor of Crispus; but this was baffled by the 
imperturbable indifference of the proconsul Gallio, who, 
in accordance with the principles of the Roman law, as 
well as with the philosophical calmness of his own disposi- 
tion, positively refused to hear a case which appeared to 
him not to fall within his jurisdiction. 

How critical this epoch was considered in the Apostle's 
life, is evident from the mention of the vision which ap- 
peared to him on the night of his expulsion from the 
synagogue, in which "the Lord exhorted" him to lay aside 
all fear, and to speak boldly. The promise to the original 
Apostles, " I am with you," was distinctly addressed to 
him, combined with the declaration that the reward of 
his labour would be great,—" for I have much people in 
this city." Such a consolation was only vouchsafed to 
the Apostle, as far as we know, thrice besides. Once in 
the Temple at Jerusalem, shortly after his conversion j 
once in the fortress of Antonia; and once in the terror of 
the Shipwreck. The language used in the vision, im- 
plies both the anxiety under which he laboured, and 
the importance of his not giving way to it ; as though he 
felt that he was now entering on a new and untried 
sphere, and needed especial support to sustain him 
through it. 

That the result justified the experiment is known to 
us from the First Epistle. To a degenerate state of 



THE CORINTHIANS. 



435 



society, such as that which existed in the capital of 
Greece at that time ; to a worn-out creed, which con- 
sisted rather in a superstitious apprehension of unseen 
powers than in any firm belief of an overruling Provi- 
dence ; to a worn-out philosophy, which had sunk from 
the sublime aspirations of Plato and the practical wisdom 
of Aristotle into the subtleties of the later Stoics and 
Epicureans ; to a worn-out national character, in which 
little but the worst parts of the Greek mind survived, — the 
appearance of a man thoroughly convinced of the truth 
of his belief, dwelling not on rhetorical systems, but on 
simple facts, and with a sagacity and penetration which 
even the most worldly-minded could not gainsay, must 
have been as life from the dead. There were some con- 
verts doubtless from the wealthier citizens ; but the chief 
impression was produced on the lower orders of society : 
"not many mighty, not many noble, not many wise," 
but slaves and artisans formed the class from which the 
Christian society at Corinth was mainly drawn. Through 
all these converts ran the same electric shock; they 
were a distinct body To the Apostle him- 

self they looked with a veneration which must have 
been long unknown to any Grecian heart. No other 
Christian teacher had as yet interfered with his para- 
mount claim over them; he was "their father;" and 
by his precepts they endeavoured to regulate the whole 

F F 2 



436 



EXPOSITORY. 



course of their lives. It was after eighteen months' re- 
sidence amongst such followers that the Apostle took his 

departure 

The first Epistle to the Corinthians was sent from 
Ephesus, or from some spot in the neighbourhood of 
Ephesus, at the close of the three years spent there by 
the Apostle. It must have been written in the spring, as 
Pentecost is spoken of as not far distant ; and, if so, the 
allusions it contained to the Jewish passover become 
more appropriate. It was written, with the exception of the 
few last lines, not by the Apostle's own hand, but by an 
amanuensis ; not in his own name alone, but in that of 
Sosthenes also. This, then, is the group which we must 
conceive as present, if not throughout, at least at the 
opening of the Epistle. There is Paul himself, now about 
sixty years of age, and bearing in the pallor and feeble- 
ness of his frame, traces of his constant and recent 
hardships; his eyes at times streaming with tears of 
grief and indignation; the scribe, catching the words 
from his lips and recording them on the scroll of parchment 
or papyrus which lay before him. Possibly Sosthenes was 
himself the scribe ; and if bO, we may conceive him not 
only transcribing, but also bearing his part in the Epistle ; 
at times with signs of acquiescence and approbation, at 
times, it may be, interposing to remind the Apostle of 
some forgotten fact, as of the baptism of the household of 



THE CORINTHIANS. 



437 



Stephanas, or of some possible misapprehension of what 

he had dictated 

He opens his Epistle with that union of courtesy and 
sagacity which forms so characteristic a feature in all his 
addresses, and at once gives utterance to expressions of 
the strong thankfulness and hope, excited by all that was 
really encouraging in the rapid progress of the Corinthian 
Church. 

The preface is immediately succeeded by the state- 
ment of his complaints against them. Having there 
dismissed the immediate grounds for censure, he proceeds 
to answer in detail the questions contained in their 

letter 

Before he is done with the discussion of these questions 
he bursts forth into the fervent description of Christian 
Love, which, as it meets all the various difficulties and 
complaints in the whole course of the Epistle, must be re- 
garded as the climax and turning point of the whole. 
With the exception of one severe expression, which seems 
to betray the anxiety and indignation working within 
(i Cor. xvi. 22), it is concluded with the usual calmness 
and gentleness of the Apostle's parting salutations. 

St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians, p. 1. 



PRACTICAL. 



HE A VEN. 



HAT do we mean by "heaven?" What is "the 



kingdom of heaven," whether below or above? 
What do we mean when we speak of " a heaven upon 
earth?" We mean, and the Bible means, many things. 
Things "which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard;" 
" unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to 
utter." But we all mean this, and the Bible teaches us 
this, and it is far beyond what was known by our heathen 
forefathers : " In heaven there is no sin" They believed, 
that in the other world, after a short respite of peace and 
love, the powers of evil would again break out more 
strongly than ever, and that everything good would be 
trampled down and destroyed, even more than upon 
earth. To us, the hope of heaven is the hope that the 
evil which vexes and tempts and denies and deceives us 




442 



PRACTICAL. 



here, will never appear before us again. Whatever good 
we are doing here, whatever good we see others doing 
here, will be continued there. Whatever evil we have 
done here, whatever others do to us here, will, if by 
God's grace we reach that better land, be left behind us 
never to be seen again. 

Let me tell a tale which is perfectly true, and though 
it relates to one humble calling, has its lesson for 
all. 

It was about thirty years ago, or more, when stage- 
coaches still ran, that an excellent old clergyman, who 
had a keen observation of the world, was travelling on 
the top of the coach from Norwich to London. It was 
a cold winter night, and the coachman, as he drove his 
horses over Newmarket-heath, poured forth such a volley 
of oaths and foul language, as to shock all the passengers. 
The old clergyman, who was sitting close to him, said 
nothing, but fixed his piercing blue eyes upon him with 
a look of extreme wonder and astonishment. At last 
the coachman became uneasy, and turning round to him, 
said, " What makes you look at me, sir, in that way?" 

The clergyman said, still with his eye fixed upon him, 
" I cannot imagine what you will do in heaven ! There 
are no horses, or coaches, or saddles, or bridles, or 
public-houses in heaven. There will be no one to 
swear at, or to whom you can use bad language. I 



HEAVEN. 



443 



cannot think what you will do when you get to 
heaven." 

The coachman said nothing, the clergyman said 
nothing more, and they parted at the end of the journey. 
Some years afterwards the clergyman was detained at an 
inn on the same road, and was told that a dying man 
wished to see him. He was taken up into a bed-room in 
a loft, hung round with saddles, bridles, bits, and whips, 
and on the bed, amongst them, lay the sick man. 

" Sir," said the man, " do you remember speaking to 
the coachman who swore so much as he drove over New- 
market-heath ?" " Yes," replied the clergyman. " I am 
that coachman," said he, " and I could not die happy 
without telling you how I have remembered your words, 
' I cannot think what you will do in heaven' Often and 
often as I have driven over the heath I have heard these 
words ringing in my ears, and I have flogged the horses 
to make them get over that ground faster, but always the 
words have come back to me, ' 1 cannot think what you 
will do in heaven' " 

We can all suppose what the good minister said to the 
dying man. But the words apply to every human being 
whose chief interest lies in other things than doing good, 
and being good, and who delights in doing and saying 
what is evil. There is no making money in heaven, — 
there is no promotion — there is no gossip — there is no 



444 



PRACTICAL. 



idleness — there is no controversy — there is no detrac- 
tion in heaven. — " / cannot think what you will do when 
you go to heaven." Let these words ring in our ears, 
and tell us as we read that nothing except goodness 
gets into heaven. 

Good Words for 1861. 



THE CONFLICT OF THE SOUL. 



T T THAT is meant when the Apostle refers us for our 
VV safeguard against evil, not to the love of the 
Father or to the grace of Christ, but to our communion 
with the Holy Spirit? He means this— that there is a 
power not out of ourselves, but within ourselves, resting 
on no external proof, but on its own internal evidence, 
deep seated in our innermost conscience and conscious- 
ness, which is no less than the power and presence of God 
Himself. Those good thoughts which dart across our 
souls, we know not whence or how; those flashes of a 
better light than that which we meet in common every- 
day life; those tender emotions and noble instincts 
which shrink from the presence of everything base, or 
treacherous, or impure ; that stern voice of conscience, 
which rules, and condemns, and approves what we do, 



446 



PRACTICAL. 



and think, and say; — these are not the mere passing, 
fleeting results of this earthy human frame ; they are the 
breathings, the messages, the expressions, the intimations 
of the near presence of Almighty God, the Lord of 
heaven and earth. If we listen to them, we are on His 
side ; if we refuse to listen to them, we place ourselves 
on the side, it may be, of success now, but of total, hope- 
less failure at the end. — In that wonderful account of the 
first battle of the Crimean war, which many of us, I doubt 
not, have lately read (Kinglake's History of the Invasion 
of the Crimea) it is maintained that " the turning moment 
of a fight is a moment of trial for the soul, and not for the 
body ; and it is, therefore, that such courage as men a.re 
able to gather from being gross in numbers can be easily 
outweighed by the warlike virtues of the few Ac- 
cording to the grand thought which floated in the mind 
of the churchman who taught the Russians" (so the 
historian of the battle draws out this remarkable thought) 
" their form of prayer for victory, there are angels of 
light, and angels of darkness and horror, who soar above 
the heads of the soldiery destined to be engaged in close 
fight, and attend them into battle. When the fight grows 
hot, the angels hover down near to earth, with their 
bright limbs twined deep in the wreaths of smoke which 
divide the combatants. But it is no coarse bodily help 
which these angels bring. More spiritual than the old 



THE CONFLICT OF THE SOUL. 



447 



Immortals, they strike no blow, they snatch no man's 
weapon, they lift away no warrior in a cloud. What the 
angel of light can bestow is valour, priceless valour— a 
light to lighten the path to victory, giving men grace to 
see the bare truth, and seeing it, to have the mastery. 
To troops who are to be blessed with victory, the angel 
of light seems to beckon and gently draw them forward 
to their destined triumph." Such is the account given 
of an actual battle by an eye-witness, who had the 
genius to see into the inner causes of success and failure. 
But, if it be true of the conflict of physical forces in war, 
how much more is it true of the conflict of the moral 
forces in the soul ? There, indeed, it is no external agency 
which will help us j it is the Holy Spirit of God working 
with and through our spirits. It is not on physical force, 
or worldly station, or applauding multitudes, no, nor even 
the oracles of human authority, however venerable, nor 
the advice and support of friends, however dear, that we 
must lean on in the last resort. We must lean on God 
and on our own souls ; on God in our own selves j that 
is on the strength and the light which can be given only 
by the indwelling of the Divine Spirit itself, not in the 
mere outer chambers of our opinions, or our manners, or 
our language, but in the very innermost sanctuary of all, 
our hearts, our consciences. Give us this, O God, and 
Thou givest us everything. Give us Thyself to enlighten, 



448 



PRACTICAL. 



elevate, strengthen. Give us Thyself not in nature only, 
not in history only, not in thy fatherly love only, not in 
Thy redeeming grace only, but in thy close communion 
and fellowship with our souls, and minds, and judgments. 
Make our wills strong with the strength of Thy will ; 
make our hearts holy with the freshness of Thy holiness ; 
make our judgments independent with the independence 
of Thine own eternity. Make our souls, in their search 
for truth, to be " safe under Thy feathers, for Thy faith- 
fulness and Thy truth shall be our shield and buckler." 
This, and nothing less than this, we ask of Thee in all 
time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in all our 
thirst for knowledge, in all our sense of ignorance, in the 
war which we have to fight, in the decision which we 
have to decide, in the solution which we hope to find 
for our thousand difficulties ; — this is what we have to 
seek. Within ourselves, not without ourselves, in the 
court of our own consciences, which is the throne of the 
Holy Spirit of God, must each decision be made for good 
or for evil in that struggle, which gives its true value to life 
and to death across the dark river and through the tangled 
thicket, and midst the flying shots, and up to the distant 
height, where we shall stand at last victorious through 
the might of that Blessed Spirit, which is indeed "our 
refuge and strength, our very present health in trouble." 
Forgive me if I venture to explain this figure of the 



THE CONFLICT OF THE SOUL. 



449 



apostle, " Grieve not the Spirit," by an illustration, which 
draws out in a living image the thought which lies hid 
in his emphatic phrase. 

There is a well-known German picture, representing 
a young man playing at chess with the Tempter of his 
soul. He is intent on his game ; his head is leaning on 
his hand ; he sees only the moves of the pieces immedi- 
ately before him ; he thinks that he still has the play in 
his own grasp. Opposite to him sits the exulting Fiend ; 
there is a look of triumph over the easy prey; already 
piece after piece has been taken ; here a good deed is 
gone ; there a prayer has been removed ; there an act of 
faith ; there an act of love ; there an act of hope. A few 
more successful moves on the Tempter's side, and the 
game is won — and the soul is lost. 

But there is yet another figure, which gives to the 
scene at once a deeper pathos, .and also a ray of hope. 
Behind the young man, unseen by him, unnoticed by the 
Tempter, stands the Guardian Angel. The wings are spread 
for flight ; the face is already turning away. It is a face 
not of anger, not of disappointment, not of despair, not of 
resistance, but of profound compassion and grief. That 
picture represents to us well the state of many amongst 
ourselves ; it represents also the meaning of the mournful, 
strange, almost singular expression of the apostle, "Grieve 
not the Holy Spirit of God." 

G G 



45° 



PRACTICAL. 



A lost opportunity ; a lost life ; a loss which, in the 
sight of God, leaves a scar on the face of the whole gene- 
ration—this is indeed a blow to the Spirit of truth, and 
the Spirit of goodness. We do indeed, as we come across 
such cases as these, seem to hear, not indeed the one 
piercing lament that mourns over one lost soul, but some- 
thing which is more pathetic still— "the long sorrowful 
wailing sound " which is described after a hard fought 
battle, " as though it had been wrung from the heart of 
brave men defeated;" the tokens observed with bitter 
grief by the historian of the last days of Jerusalem, the 
awful signs of Departing Deity, when through the Temple 
courts was heard, or thought to be heard the motion, the 
sad despairing cry, as of a great multitude, saying, "Let 
us go hence." ......... 

It is well for a moment to be recalled not merely to 
the serious, but to the tragical side of human sin ; to be 
reminded not only of the anger and the love, but the 
grief of Him whose Spirit is not merely despised and 
outraged, but vexed and grieved as with a father's or 
a mother's grief, as one by one His armies of good 
thoughts, and noble words, and just intentions, seem to 
be withdrawn or driven off either from the individual 
soul, or from the collective spirit of man. " The Lord 
repented that he had made man, and it grieved him at his 
heart." Not only once, but often in the course of his- 
tory, must this Divine repentance have brooded over the 



THE CONFLICT OF THE SOUL. 45 1 



world, and the heart of God been grieved at the failure 
of the noblest characters, at the waste of the fairest 
opportunities, at the relapse and retrogression of a whole 
nation, a whole generation, a whole race of mankind from 
the mission which lay before them. " My Spirit shall not 
always strive with man." Such is the result which the 
sacred writer ascribes to this Awful Penitence of God — 
these great opportunities for good come once in a man's 
life, and do not return. They come once in a century, 
nay, we may almost say, they come only once in an age. 
The generation, the century, the age itself, may be like 
that unconscious victim of the Tempter's arts, it may 
oppose to the Spirit of God no violent resistance, nothing 
but the force of inertness, of inactivity, of incapacity, the 
vis inertia of human nature. But the effect is the same. 
"The Spirit is grieved," "vexed," thwarted, driven away 
by the unsympathetic, unrecognizing, unconscious oppo- 
sition, and the opportunity comes no more. These, and 
such as these, are the sad freaks of human nature that 
make angels weep. This, and such as this, was the 
prospect which drew tears from the eyes of Him whose 
Spirit we seek to win. " He, when he beheld the city, 
wept over it, and said, If thou hadst known, even thou, 
at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy 
peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes !" 

Sermons. 



THE BEAST IN MAN. 



T7 VERY man, it has been truly said, has a "beast" within 
him, which he must tame, and guide, and control. 
By many figures is this represented to us, both in Scrip- 
ture and in familiar language, so as to make all animated 
nature a parable, a satire on human crime and sin. 
" The great adversary," who lurks within the heart of each 
of us, is still, as of old, like the insinuating serpent, "more 
subtle than any beast of the field," or the fierce lion 
roaring for his prey, stalking about, or " seeking whom 
he may devour." There is the tiger in man, and in vast 
masses of men, which is maddened by the sight of its 
own cruelty, which, when once it has tasted blood, knows 
not where to stop. There is the senseless imitation of 
what we do not understand, repeating phrases by rote, 
reproducing, as if it was our own, the wisdom or the folly 
of those above or around us, the exact likeness of what we 
see in the gestures of the ape or the speech of the parrot. 



THE BEAST IN MAN. 



453 



How striking, also, is the resemblance both of nations and 
individuals, as the Bible tells us, to " sheep which have 
gone astray," foolishly following, each in the other's 
track, each running where the other has leaped before, 
lost, scattered, bewildered, "as sheep without a shep- 
herd." There is the look which once seen can never be 
forgotten, of the hardened malefactor, caught at last in his 
own trap— with the ferocious glare, the restless movement, 
the desperate cunning, of the savage animal turning to 
bay against his pursuers. Gluttony, drunkenness, sen- 
suality—nay, even long indulged selfishness or indolence- 
do indeed, in the strong, but not too strong, language of 

common life, turn a man into a " beast." 

We are, indeed, the lords of the creation.— Look even 
at the outward appearance of man, what a rebuke it admin- 
isters to all the grovelling weaknesses of our lower nature ! 
That wide capacious brow and head teeming with the organ 
of thought within; that upturned countenance, "looking 
before and after,"— what an onward, upward, heavenward 
course does it open to us ; what a prospect before-r-what 
a retrospect behind— what a wide horizon round us (not 
seen even by the outward eye of any other creature) of 
hopes and fears, and endless aspirations ! Our tears and 
laughter,— what an infinite capacity of pure joy, of pa- 
thetic sorrow, is wrapped in those two simple physical 
emotions peculiar to ourselves alone ! Our articulate 



454 



PRACTICAL. 



speech — to what community, to what sympathy, to what 
accumulation of experience does this point, as the in- 
heritance of the whole race and of every portion of it ! 
Our hands, how their very joints and fingers beckon us 
on to the active works by which life is ennobled, and 
sweetened, and glorified, and express by their delicate 
touch that most refined development of humanity to which 
our later age has given the name of " tact." Our feet, on 
which alone of created beings, we stand erect and firm — 
what steadiness, what uprightness of purpose do they 
imply in the inner life of which they are the support and 
stay ! Every downward course into mere animal pleasure, 
every crooked walk, the idle hand, the senseless speech, 
the hesitating step — every one of these is a reversal of the 
order of our nature. It is a treason against that virtue 
which many of us prize above all others — manliness. " To 
be manly," "to be like a man," " to act like a man," " to be 
a man," — words often used, simple as they are, how much 
they involve ! what a world of folly, meanness, selfishness, 
levity, cowardice, flies before them ! When the Apostle 
wishes to impress on his converts his whole desire for 
them, he says, " Stand fast in the faith, quit you like men"'' 

Sermons. 



LONDON : 

B CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 
BREAD STREET HILL. 



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